Skip to main content

Saudi Arabia's example of investing oil wealth at home

Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Zamil, Chairman of Saudia Arabia's multi-industry conglomerate Zamil Group and CEO of National Chemical Carriers Ltd., said here Thursday that Gulf Arab states shall follow Saudi Arabia's example of investing oil wealth at home rather than buying assets abroad.

Speaking at the three-day annual Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA), Al-Zamil said that Saudi-Arabia's conservative investment policy has saved the kingdom from the full impact of financial crisis. He urged all members of the Gulf Co- operation Council (GCC), to build up their own industries and to export "petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, rather than barrels of oil," said Al-Zamil.

The industry tycoon added that oil was sold Thursday in Europe at world market prices of 110 U.S. dollars per barrel although it is only stored there, "but the GCC states have much higher costs and less benefits from exporting pure barrels."

Unlike sovereign wealth funds in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi or Dubai, Saudi Arabia hosts the world's largest petrochemical producer, Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC). According to research data compiled by the GPCA, petrochemicals account for 72 percent of Saudi Arabia's non-oil exports, compared to 61 percent in Kuwait and 9 percent in the UAE.

Investing most of oil export revenues abroad and hoarding money on bank accounts was the wrong way for the GCC, said Al-Zamil. " Look at Libya, it lost billions by investing abroad. Look at the Kuwaiti banks or Dubai, both of which were hit badly by the global financial crisis," he said, adding that public funding by the Saudi government paid off in 97 percent of all projects, while " global shopping tours" were much more risky.

In fact, Kuwait's largest investment bank Global Investment House, which avoided a near-bankruptcy in 2008 after suffering losses in foreign exchange trading, has still not overcome the crisis as the lender agreed a week ago with creditors to restructure 1.7 billion dollars of debt. State-funds of the emirate of Dubai and Abu Dhabi divested from a number of engagements abroad.The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Aabar Investments sold its remaining 3 percent stake in Germany's Daimler AG in October.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iran will start exporting gas to Iraq

Iran will start exporting gas to Iraq within the next three months, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Sunday. Qasemi, who met with his Iraqi counterpart Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi in Baghdad, said the agreement on Iranian gas supplies to Iraq had "reached the stage of final signing." "The launch of gas exports will proceed by stages, First, gas will start to be supplied to Baghdad and then, within another three months, to Basra," official news agency IRNA quoted Qasemi as saying. Iraq is expected to consume about 20-25 million cubic meters of Iranian gas per day. Iran, which has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, is also close to signing an agreement on gas supplies to Syria via Iraq, Qasemi said. "The signing of this agreement will take place in Tehran with the participation of representatives from the three countries," the Iranian oil minister said. In the summer of 2010, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a memora...
Post a Comment
Read more

Buried Treasures in Bohol Philippines

Written by Joe Espiritu       Four persons died in a treasure hunting accident last week. They died for nothing. Many had lost their shirts in the venture, the propensity for Filipinos to get rich quick attribute to the treasure hunting mania. The sad part is that only the ignorant venture on the search, those in the know, being sure that nothing will come out of the effort would not think of investing money, time and effort – this time lives – in a fruitless enterprise.        There had been stories of people getting rich uncovering treasure troves in unlikely places. Most stories are false. Ancient graves of archeological and anthropological value had been desecrated by treasure hunters. They had found nothing. Those people may have struck it rich but not from some hidden riches. Contrary to what other people say, there are no buried treasures in Bohol . If there had been, they were unearthed years ago.         If one ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fast Website Speed Affects Google Search Ranking

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?  Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews , Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.  "Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much." "I think a lot of people in 2010 are g...
Post a Comment
Read more