Foreign Investment Into Saudi Arabia Falls Back To Earth

Foreign Investment Into Saudi Arabia Falls Back To Earth

Attendees on the opening day of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in Riyadh, Saudi ... [+] Arabia, on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Photo: Tasneem Alsultan/Bloomberg Inward investment into Saudi Arabia has fallen back down to earth after hitting a new high earlier in the year. The latest figures from the Saudi Central Bank (Sama), released this week, show inward foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country was $1. 75 billion in the third quarter of 2021. That was a sharp fall from the record figure of $13. 8 billion in the April-June quarter, which had been boosted by a deal for the pipeline network of energy giant Saudi Aramco. The most recent figure is in line with the country's performance in the latter part of 2020 and early 2021, and underlines the continuing difficulty the government is having in attracting significant levels of inward investment – a necessity if Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's plan to restructure the economy is to succeed. Inward FDI levels into Saudi Arabia collapsed in 2017 and while some of the lost ground has been made up since then, it is nowhere near the level needed to make a success of major projects such