RIYADH: The final round of the Entrepreneurship World Cup is coming to Riyadh in March with competitors from more than 200 countries hoping to secure cash prizes worth over $1 million. The event’s finale is a key part of Biban 2023, one of the region’s largest start-up, small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurship conferences, set for Mar. 9 to 13 Biban 2023 is organized by Saudi Arabia’s SMEs General Authority, also known as Monsha’at, and this year’s theme is ‘Attract-Connect-Achieve’. Some 105,000 attendees from the Kingdom and abroad are set to descend on the event, which will also feature over 350 speakers sharing their insights about the SME ecosystem globally and regionally. According to a press release, the event will host over 300 workshops, distributed among more than 20,000 beneficiaries. The conference is being organized in Saudi Arabia at a time when the Kingdom is pursuing its journey to becoming a global hotspot for SMEs, entrepreneurship, and business innovation. Monsha’at, through its various initiatives including hosting conferences like Biban 2023, aims to successfully achieve the targets outlined in Vision 2030 which include lowering the unemployment rate from 11.6 percent to 7 percent, increasing women’s participation in the workforce from 22 percent to 30 percent, and expanding SME contribution to 35 percent of gross domestic product by the end of this decade. The growth of SMEs in Saudi Arabia was monumental in 2022, with Monsha’at issuing establishment-size certificates to 24,540 such businesses. In January, a report by venture data platform MAGNiTT noted that investments in Saudi startups grew by 72 percent to a record high of SR3.701 billion ($987 million) in 2022. To further accelerate the startup ecosystem in the Kingdom, the Saudi Central Bank, also known as SAMA, in January, reduced the minimum paid-up capital for finance firms specialized in financing and supporting SMEs to SR50 million. SAMA also noted that the amendment made to the Implementing Regulation of the Finance Companies Control Law cements its efforts to further develop Saudi Arabia’s SME sector.