Crown Prince launches Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched today, Oct. 23, the Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (GSCRI).

The initiative aims to strengthen the Kingdom’s position as a major hub in global supply chains.

It will also enable the Kingdom to achieve its vision and ambitions, including the development and diversification of national economic resources and enhancing the Kingdom’s position to rank among the world’s top 15 economies by 2030.

The GSCRI is one of the initiatives of Saudi Arabia’s National Investment Strategy, launched in October 2021 to accelerate efforts to make the Kingdom a global investment powerhouse. The initiative aims to enable global investors to make optimal use of the Kingdom’s natural resources and untapped potential and form strong relationships with regional and global markets.

The GSCRI aims to make the Kingdom an optimal investment environment for all investors in supply chains, through several steps. These steps include, identifying and developing investment opportunities and presenting them to investors, establishing a number of special economic zones in the near future, through which an attractive environment can be created for investors, in addition to attracting the regional headquarters of international companies to the Kingdom. The Kingdom is also working to implement regulatory and procedural reforms in various aspects, which, in turn, will contribute to further improving the investment environment and increasing its attractiveness and competitiveness. As well as make the investment plays an essential role to achieve economic growth and diversity in light of Saudi Vision 2030 objectives.

A unified strategy will be developed to attract global supply chains to Saudi Arabia to attract qualitative investments in industry and services at a total of SAR 40 billion in the first two years of the initiative.

The Kingdom allocated an incentive budget of nearly SAR 10 billion to offer an extensive package of financial and non-financial incentives for investors.

The initiative allows investors to leverage the Kingdom’s competitive advantages to boost the success of their investments, including the Kingdom’s solid and growing economy.

The Kingdom’s is the largest economy in the Middle East and ranks among the top 20 and fastest-growing economies worldwide. Investors can also benefit from the Kingdom’s strategic geographic location amidst three continents, in addition to available energy sources, such as oil, gas and electricity.

The Kingdom offers a robust logistics infrastructure across industrial cities, airports and ports, with ambitious expansion plans underway as part of the National Transport and Logistics Strategy. The country’s digital infrastructure has witnessed significant progress, with widespread high-speed internet coverage and 5G now available to nearly 80% of the population. Saudi’s workforce is young, educated and ambitious, with Saudis under the age of 30 accounting for about 60% of the population.

In addition to these advantages, the Kingdom has launched many ambitious plans and programs that have already begun to be implemented, with the aim of achieving sustainability, protecting the environment and confronting climate change. These plans include major initiatives such as the Saudi Green Initiative and the Middle East Green Initiative”, and the program to diversify the energy mix used in generating electricity, so that the proportion of renewable energy in electric power production will be 50% by 2030. They also include the development of Blue and Green hydrogen production; to make Saudi Arabia the largest producer and exporter of this product, as well as pioneering steps in the development and application of carbon capture technologies, which supports the National Initiative for Global Supply Chains in one of its main axes to attract green investment opportunities such as: manufacturing green metals using green hydrogen, manufacturing hydrogen production devices by electrolysis, advanced industries in recycling and others, in furtherance of Saudi Arabia's initiatives for the circular carbon economy.