As the recently appointed Director of the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) for Saudi Arabia, Chris Innes-Hopkins said of his role: “It is one of the best Trade and Investment jobs in the region. The UKTI is what you might call a jointly-owned department between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). It reports to both departments, but in effect it is a pretty integral part of the FCO. All the overseas costs are integrated into Embassies and much of the funding comes from the FCO budget”. Innes-Hopkins brings with him considerable experience from a variety of jobs in political, economic and commercial sectors in the FCO as well as the private sector. On leaving Exeter University with a BA (Hons) in Politics, specializing in International Relations, he was on the look out for a career with variety and the opportunity to travel widely. “I eventually decided on the FCO,” he remarked. “It has given me an extremely interesting career and this is my eighth foreign posting.” After an initial three years in London, Innes-Hopkins was despatched on his first overseas posting, aged 24, to Guyana in South America. He went on to work in Paris, Tunis, Ankara, Jerusalem, Kuwait and Cairo, as well as working with the EU in Brussels where he was an advisor to the first EU Middle East Envoy. He traveled widely in the region in that role, and then took time-out of the FCO. “I worked in Egypt on a project job, and then joined the Middle East Association as their Trade and Government Affairs Director in London. I traveled extensively in the region – although not to KSA – with trade missions and that sort of thing. Just before I came back to the FCO, I did a private sector secondment to the BG Group in Egypt. This is a form of British Gas, which is one of the biggest investors in Egypt. I managed their corporate and Government affairs in Egypt for a year to get private sector experience.” Innes-Hopkins has clear objectives about what he would like to develop in his role. “My first objective is to promote British exports, but I view British exports as not just exports of goods but also promoting what you might call ‘services' or ‘expertise',” he said. He went on to talk about the challenges Saudi Arabia faces with employment for young Saudis. “I think it is very important for any British company wanting to do business here to recognize not just the opportunities, but also the challenges in the economy. You only have to read the paper to see the big debate on Saudization at the moment and how to get more young Saudis into the job market. But equally important is how to give them the skills and work ethic to enable them to get the jobs. So I think that whole area is key to our future relationship here. That is why, for example, we invited the Minister of Labour from Saudi Arabia to visit the UK recently to look at the way we are tackling some of the same challenges, because we have some of the same challenges in the UK. “It's looking at areas where we can exchange expertise, develop cooperation and then out of that cooperation, business opportunities will develop in the medium term. It is very important that the work I do is fully integrated with the efforts of the rest of the embassy. Whenever I pursue those opportunities, there may be other parts of the embassy that can contribute, whether it is the British Council on the education front, or the political section on giving their advice.” Innes-Hopkins' vision of his work is to stress the opportunities here to partner and work with both the Saudi Government and the Saudi private sector on things like Small and Medium Size Enterprises' (SME) development. He sees this as key to getting more Saudis into jobs, because it is not Government that is going to provide the jobs at the end of the day. “This state of affairs is not exclusive to Saudi Arabia,” he went on. “It is the same situation and challenge throughout the region. There are very young populations, sometimes highly qualified, who are expecting jobs and not always getting them. It is not just about creating jobs, but how to create an education system that is providing the right skills for the people who want the jobs. What I am talking about here are things like technical and vocational training...I think British companies, and the British Government, have something to offer in this question. We haven't got all the answers but I think we can work with Saudi partners to make progress on those challenges.” Although Innes-Hopkins is based in Riyadh, he is also responsible for the UK trade teams in Al-Khobar and Jeddah. He regularly travels to both cities to keep in touch with their consulates, as well as meet key contacts and identify collaboration opportunities. “Saudi Arabia is judged by the World Bank to be very high up on the ‘Ease of Doing Business' index, globally,” he explained. “Every time I come to Jeddah, I am amazed at the breadth of the opportunities that exist. I want to make sure UK PLC is taking the opportunities in this country seriously. There is a need to get a message across to a wider audience that this is not just an oil and gas economy. It is increasingly a diversified industrial economy with growing needs in terms of education, health care, and everything else, and this creates great opportunities for us as partners to work with Saudi Arabia in a positive way – but you can't do it from a distance. You have to visit and invest in the relationship building.”
