Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan said that the announcement of the first wave of the projects, supported by the Private Sector Partnership Reinforcement (Shareek) Program, will stimulate the growth and expansion of major private sector companies in the Kingdom. The first wave of projects, announced by Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on March 1, amounting to SR192 billion, will be implemented by eight major companies in four vital sectors. The minister emphasized that the expansion of domestic investments would contribute to achieving the goals of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 represented in raising the private sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) to 65 percent and increasing the proportion of non-oil exports in the non-oil GDP to 50 percent. He said that the Shareek program is working to support additional projects for large companies and overcome the challenges they face in a way that contributes to accelerating the pace of their growth. “The projects supported by the Shareek program achieve an economic impact for the Kingdom, and contribute to the localization of industries, opening new investment fields, providing job and business opportunities for citizens, and thus contributing to reducing unemployment rates. The announcement of the first 12 projects helps advance the wheel of the private sector, which leads to the responsibility to achieve sustainable growth. The Shareek program is also working on developing new and qualitative investment opportunities that are in line with the Kingdom’s national strategies, and in coordination with the relevant government agencies through specialized sectoral supervisory committees, which raises the level of investment ambition for major companies. Some of these opportunities may require international partnerships to transfer knowledge and contribute to the sustainability of projects and global competition, which opens the way for partnerships between large companies in the Kingdom and foreign investors, and some of the projects announced in the first package are cited as examples of these partnerships. The minister stated that the remarkable economic transformation that the Kingdom is witnessing will be discussed at the Financial Sector Conference, which will be held from March 15 to 16, during which ways of working with foreign investors to support growth in the Kingdom, as well as the region and the world will be reviewed. Al-Jadaan said that the Kingdom has become today the fastest-growing economy in the G20 in 2022, thanks to the continuation of economic reform programs and fiscal discipline. The fastest growth of the economy is represented by the low inflation rate and steady sustainable growth in the medium term, supported by strong and growing non-oil GDP growth, he added.