International Companies Establish Main Offices in Riyadh
24 international companies signed agreements to establish major regional offices for them in the city of Riyadh. This was in the presence of the Minister of Investment, Eng.Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih, and the CEO of the Royal Commission for Riyadh, Fahd bin Abdul-Mohsen Al-Rasheed.
The signing ceremony was also attended by CEOs of major international companies such as PepsiCo; Schlumberger; Deloitte; PWC; Tim Hortons; Bictel; Bush; and Boston Scientific among others.
This step reflects the importance and confidence that the Saudi market enjoys both regionally and globally.
The efforts to attract the regional headquarters of international companies comes as an element of Riyadh’s strategy. They aim to double the size of the economy and achieve major leaps in generating jobs. They also aims to improve the quality of life, by attracting and expanding investments to place Riyadh among the top 10 city economies in the world by 2030.
The headquarters’ attraction program also aims to increase the percentage of local content, reduce any economic leakage, and develop new sectors. It can in addition create tens of thousands of new quality jobs for the best qualified people.
In order to create an investment environment there are many accompanying complementary programs, such as attracting new international schools and increasing the demand that would raise the level of services in the city.
Attracting regional headquarters is not an end, but rather one of the economic growth enablers that Riyadh aspires to achieve. It must be noted that the Kingdom is currently working on many systemic amendments with the aim of developing an investment environment that incubates global investments.
Noteworthy, there are regional headquarters for about 346 international companies in the Middle East and North Africa region. The transfer of these company headquarters to Riyadh has many benefits. It will contribute to facilitating procedures, decision-making, understanding the needs of the market more and expanding investment in the Saudi market.
The Kingdom will work to provide many incentives and benefits that raise its competitiveness regionally and globally, to attract these headquarters and give them sufficient time to move and operate without affecting their business.
The incentives offered will be limited to regional headquarters only, not to their operations based outside the regional headquarters.
The Royal Commission for Riyadh will work with these companies on programs and initiatives to qualify young Saudi leaders to work in these headquarters. Attracting regional headquarters will result in more than 35,000 jobs for young men and women of the Kingdom. Every job created in the regional headquarters produces two or three jobs approximately.
It is expected that attracting headquarters will contribute to the national economy with a value of 61 to 70 billion riyals by 2030 through the salaries, operating and capital expenditures of these companies, resulting in a growth in local content across many important sectors.
