Saudi Arabia decided to allow foreign investors to invest in several new sectors, including recruitment offices, audiovisual services, land transport, and real-estate brokerages.
The Cabinet amended in its weekly meeting on Tuesday what it described as a list of types of activity that had been previously excluded from foreign investment.
This vital decision reflects the growing inflow of foreign investments into the Saudi market.
This inflow in various fields is an important indicator of the extent to which foreign investors are keen to boost their investments in the local market, which has led the Kingdom to open for them more sectors.
The Kingdom is one of the world's most attractive countries for foreign investment nowadays while it also represents an important factor in the global economy.
The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority’s (SAGIA) report for the Q3 of 2018 showed an increase in the number of licenses granted to foreign and local companies investing in Saudi Arabia by more than 90 percent compared with the same period in 2017.
SAGIA has granted 499 licenses until the end of the third quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, Moody’s Investor Service has affirmed the Kingdom’s A1 rating with a stable outlook.
It raised Saudi’s GDP growth forecasts for the period (2018-2019) to 2.5 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, instead of its previous expectations of 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent for the same period reported in April this year.
These revised numbers from Moody’s even exceed the forecasts announced by the government in the preliminary statement of the 2019 budget announcement on September 30, 2018.
On the other hand, Trade and Investment System has made progress in seven major indicators that are related to trade and investment in the Global Competitiveness Report 2018, which was issued by the World Economic Forum.
These include shareholder governance, companies adopting changing ideas, behavior towards entrepreneurial risks, small and medium enterprise (SME) financing, growth of innovative companies, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and strong audit and accounting standards.
The remarkable progress in the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 contributed to the Kingdom's best progress in six years, ranking 39 out of 140 registered countries with 67.5 points.
The Ministry of Commerce and Investment, in cooperation with the Capital Market Authority (CMA), made progress in the "shareholders' governance" index.
The Kingdom rose to the fifth rank in the world, ranking 72nd place after it ranked 77th globally last year, to rank first in the Arab world and second in the G20.
This progress comes as a result of actions aimed at improving and developing the investment environment and raising the attractiveness of the financial market.
