RIYADH: Ministers from Saudi Arabia and Greece came together with leading private sector officials to discuss ways to enhance economic and investment cooperation between the two countries at a special Forum on Wednesday.
The meeting included discussions on communications, transport, logistics and energy, in addition to a signing ceremony for a number of agreements and memoranda of understanding, amounting to around SR14 billion ($3.7 billion).
Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Investment Khalid Al-Falih said that the Saudi-Greek Investment Forum will strengthen bilateral economic relationship between the two countries.
“For everything that we do to advance our relations are about this — whether in the form of a fiber optic data cable, electricity, culture, shipping or people to people contacts. We are truly at a historical inflection point in our bilateral economic relations,” said Al-Falih in a tweet.
During the investment forum, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with Greece to extend a submarine cable to help the Kingdom become a “major player” in the digital economy, Saudi Minister of Communications Abdullah Al-Sawaha told Al-Sharq.
“We seek for Saudi Arabia to be a magnet for cloud computing and building a new economy based on artificial intelligence,” Al-Sawaha said.
He added: “Today, we started from the stage of building the local leadership, then the digital regional leadership, and we will be the global leadership in 2030.”
During the forum, Bahri, the national shipping carrier of Saudi Arabia signed two memorandum of understanding to strengthen the maritime sector.
A strategic partnership was announced between the Saudi and Greek private sectors on the sidelines of the Crown Prince's visit to build a data cable project linking the East to the West.
This cable will ensure the smooth digital supply of data worldwide at a time when the data traffic is growing by more than 30 percent, SPA said.
This comes through the leadership of the Saudi Telecom Co. on the submarine cable project in partnership with the Greek Telecom Co., the General Energy Co. of Greece and the Cyprus Telecom Co.
STC Group announced that its subsidiary Middle East and North Africa Hub will cooperate with the Greek telecom firm TSSA to build a data corridor that extends from the Kingdom to Europe through a modern, high-capacity network of terrestrial optical fibers under the sea and will connect Europe with Asia.
The project aims to position the two countries as an eastern digital station for Europe to reach the Middle East, the continents of Africa and Asia.
Along with 21 investment agreements, Saudi Arabia and Greece also signed a deal to promote digital transformation and innovation in the fields of energy, including cybersecurity, while working to develop qualitative partnerships to localize materials, products and services related to all energy sectors and their associated supply chains and technologies.
