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Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has launched three initiatives to support and enable private sector businesses as the kingdom pushes its agenda of diversifying away from oil by 2030.
The initiatives were set out at PIF’s inaugural two-day Private Sector Forum, which began on Tuesday in Riyadh.
The 'Mushama' programme aims to increase the share of local content spend in PIF’s domestic portfolio to 60% by the end of 2025. As part of this program, each PIF company will embed local content considerations in their design decisions and procurement policies, the wealth fund said in a statement on Tuesday.
A suppliers development programme will support the development and upskilling of local suppliers and vendors to meet the growing requirements of PIF’s portfolio companies. As part of this PIF will hold vendor boot camps during this year for the contracting sector to help Tier 2 and Tier 3 contractors prepare their companies to qualify as vendors.
The third is the Private Sector Hub, a dedicated channel to share supplier and investment opportunities with the private sector.
The forum is part of PIF’s 2021-2025 strategy to “crowd in” the private sector, creating more opportunities for local businesses to collaborate in growing a more diversified, globally competitive economy as envisaged by Vision 2030.
Earlier this month PIF launched $51.2 billion of investments led by local companies, including oil giant Aramco and SABIC, under the Shareek programme, $266.6 billion investment initiative announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2021.
(Reporting by Brinda Darasha; editing by Seban Scaria)
