RIYADH, 8 February 2005 — For the first time, the Group 4 meeting of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was held in the Kingdom yesterday to promote policies for financial sector and enterprise development to support diversification in the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries.
Held in Jeddah under the guidance of Amr ibn Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the meeting focused on private sector development, enterprise financing and development, privatization, human resource development and economic diversification.
“The MENA-OECD Investment Program initiated five regional working groups based on different investment sectors to work on improving the investment environment and to implement the project,” Khaled Al-Ferayan, SAGIA media relations officer, told Arab News.
The first group will draw up “transparent and open investment policies”; second group will attract investment promotion agencies and business associations to act as driving forces for economic reform; third group will provide a tax framework for investment and assessing tax incentives; fourth group will promote policies for financial sector and enterprise development in support of economic and corporate governance; and fifth group will improve corporate governance.
The fourth working group consisted of Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and other countries from MENA in addition to the World Bank, International Energy Agency, United Nations Development Program and UNIDO.
These member countries have agreed to conduct surveys and execute investment strategies supporting economic diversification in MENA for integration into the global economy.