RIYADH — Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said that Saudi Arabia's overall non-oil sector growth is projected to reach six percent by the end of 2023. Addressing a panel discussion at the 7th Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Wednesday, he emphasized that the Kingdom, since the launch of Vision 2030 in 2016, has been working to strengthen its economy by diversifying sources of income so as to enable it to confront global changes and also support other countries. Al-Jadaan stated that the results of the annual meeting of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, which was held recently in Marrakesh, Morocco, were positive despite the geopolitical events. He noted that many countries suffer from a high rate of inflation. "About 24 low-income countries will have to pay more than 10 percent on sovereign interest rates, which is unreasonable," he said while noting that the Kingdom is no longer focusing on the domestic product, but rather on the development of the non-oil sector. Al-Jadaan emphasized that Saudi Arabia enjoys strategic relationships with America as well as with China, which is the Kingdom's largest trading partner. He expressed Saudi Arabia's willingness to improve relations between the US and China. "We will employ the opportunities to make the relationship between the US and China better. We enjoy a very good strategic relationship with the US while China is our largest trading partner, and so we need to maintain that relationship and to keep building bridges," he said while emphasizing that Saudi Arabia wants to have communications even with those with whom it may not agree on everything. Al-Jadaan noted that economic fragmentation is harmful to countries' economies. He also called for bringing down restrictions on international trade. Regarding the military escalation in Gaza, the minister underlined the need to respect international laws and the need for de-escalation to restore peace in the region. "We sympathize with the suffering of civilians in Gaza and elsewhere. International laws need to be respected, and we need to collaborate to bring calm," he said while calling for dealing with the crisis in accordance with international laws. In the panel discussion, Bahrain's Finance Minister Salman Al-Khalifa stated that the development path is moving towards diversification in various economies of the Gulf, noting that Saudi Arabia has made huge leaps in this realm, while Manama was able to reach 83 percent of the non-oil gross domestic product, and this is the development path of the country. He said that the Gulf countries have an upper hand in terms of global growth prospects. For his part, Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said that Turkey has come forward with a new economic program and that the ambiguity is gone forever. "We are concerned about the long-term repercussions of geopolitical developments," he said while adding that the growth rate of the Turkish economy until last July ranged between two percent and 2.5 percent. Addressing the session, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that dealing with high inflation rates will be costly next year. "There are 3,000 protectionist measures currently hindering global trade, and that inflation is still high, and interest will continue to increase, which will lead to a slowdown in growth." The IMF chief warned that the war between Israel and Hamas is already affecting the region's economies. "You look at the neighboring countries – Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan – there the channels of impact are already visible. What is happening in the Middle East is happening at a time when growth is slow and interest rates are high and cost of servicing debt has gone up because of COVID and war," she added.
