Nils Schmid, deputy minister president and minister of finance and economics of Baden-Wurttemberg, said some areas of cooperation had been identified and a few proposals had already been discussed during his talks with senior Saudi officials in Riyadh.
"The proposals, one concretized, will go a long way in bolstering commercial ties between the Kingdom and Baden-Wurttemberg," said Schmid, who is currently visiting the Kingdom with a 25-member business delegation. He said the German companies are well-equipped and well-positioned to support the Saudi demand for setting up small and medium industries, cooperate in metal engineering, energy and petrochemical industry with an aim to eventually transfer the know-how to local companies.
Schmid said the Saudi side had expressed keen interest to learn from German experience of tapping universities' research programs and resources to apply in industrial sector.
The minister was speaking during a reception hosted by German Ambassador Dieter W. Haller at his residence. The reception, attended by Saudi officials and businessmen including Shoura members, served as a B2B forum in which Saudi businessmen had the chance to meet the German companies.
Alauddin Al-Askary, deputy minister for protocol affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was also present.
Referring to his wide-ranging talks with senior Saudi officials including Commerce and Industry Minister Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, Schmid said potential areas of cooperation include automobile, education and machinery sectors.
To this end, he said he held talks with Prince Saud bin Abdullah bin Thenayan, chief of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, and Mohamed Al-Mady, SABIC Vice Chairman and CEO, to discuss various aspects of cooperation between SABIC and major German companies in petrochemical sector, existing investment opportunities, and other topics of common interest.
He said his delegation will also visit Jubail Industrial City and tour HADEED, a SABIC manufacturing affiliate. SABIC operates several industrial complexes in Europe, including Germany.
The minister said the education and vocational training is another potential area of cooperation.
Baden-Wurttemberg, he pointed out, is home to some of the oldest, most renowned and prestigious universities in Germany, such as the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg and Tubingen.
Baden-Wurttemberg also hosts four of the nine German 'excellence universities' namely Heidelberg, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Konstanz.
This is in addition to a number of well-known enterprises that are headquartered in that German state.
Some of them are Daimler AG, Porsche, Robert Bosch GmbH (automobile industry), Carl Zeiss AG (optics), and SAP AG (largest software enterprise in Europe).
