Saudi Gazette JEDDAH — Aligning with the Saudi Vision 2030, General Electric (GE) declared new development programs and partnerships during a media conference that was held at Park Hayat, Jeddah on Monday. These strategic partnerships and initiatives are aiming to support the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030 through focusing on developing youth and empowering women. GE is planning to open more than 4,000 jobs opportunities for young Saudis and concentrate on women development through providing trainings for around 1,000 Saudi females as well as SME entrepreneurs. GE's Chairman & CEO Jeffrey Immelt explained that with these partnerships, quality jobs for young Saudis will be created, a robust SME chain will rebuild, and the economic competitiveness will be enhanced. In Riyadh, more that 1,500 jobs will be opened since GE has started a design study with SaudiVax for a multipurpose Vaccine and Monoclonal Antibody Facility. Since GE is planning to train around 1,000 women in the coming 5 years, GE signed an MoU with the Asharqia Chamber. This MOU is focusing on developing the Saudi female skills and empower them through organizing GE Garages-led training workshops for women in the industry. GE's new partnerships include launching a Saudi- leadership Academy partnering with Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Foundation (MISK). Another initiative was Forging and Casting Manufacturing Facility with Saudi Aramco. Immelt said that the company today is aligning strong partnerships in the kingdom to focus more on improving and developing the phenomena of the localization, digitalization in the factories, and having more digital capabilities in the Kingdom. Because digitalization part of GE plans, GE had a partnership with MODON aiming to transform the manufacturing sector in Saudi Arabia. The partnership includes digitizing 10 factories with GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Software Suite. GE also disclosed that it has a high rate of Saudization since the company believes that there are many educated Saudis. It added that "to invest in a country, you should have a continues investment and this goal will be achieved by employing and investing in the youth." After asking about the importance of employing young Saudis in GE, noting that most of the employees in the Kingdom are Saudis , Hisham Albahkali, GE's president and chief executive officer for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, said GE is focusing on localization since it believes in the youth in the kingdom. The company started to implement several scheduled programs in collaboration with universities, technical institutes, females institutes, and Saudi graduates from the US. Everything is planned, he added. Immelt further revealed that "we are launching a supplier summit in Saudi Arabia (as we) have 350 suppliers from outside Saudi Arabia. They will come here for two days aiming to localize and develop supply chains in the kingdom."
