The Saudi Ministry of Investment launched on Monday a new service to establish and start a business from outside the Kingdom in three steps. The new service partners with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce to enable companies and investors to issue investment licenses quickly and easily per international best practices. The new step contributes to strengthening the Kingdom's reforms implemented to do business in the Kingdom for investors and companies. It also comes as a result of integration and partnership between government agencies to address the challenges facing investors and contributes to raising the competitiveness of the Kingdom's investment environment regionally and globally. Under the new service, new investors will only need to do three steps to authenticate the agency and attestation of the establishment contract, starting with visiting the website of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and applying for "adding a request for attestation of a contract" at the Kingdom's missions abroad. The second step requires the investors to visit the electronic services portal on the Ministry of Investment website to apply for the license issuance. The final step requires the investor to visit the Ministry of Commerce website to authenticate the establishment contract of the business and issue the commercial register. The Ministry of Investment confirmed that the new service, which was inaugurated in many of the Kingdom's embassies, will bring about fundamental changes in the investor's journey and facilitate the establishment and start of foreign companies' businesses. The new service will help investors to overcome the obstacles they faced in the past, including the need for companies to visit the Kingdom to document incorporation contracts with the multiplicity of documents and redundancy of requests, and visits to various government agencies for verification, which used to be attributed to the lack of electronic connectivity between government agencies. The ministry said that there will be a broad marketing campaign in several languages to ensure that the largest possible segment of foreign investors and companies can benefit from the new service. — SPA
