RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Social Development Bank aims to support small and medium-sized enterprises with SR24 billion ($6.3 billion) financing over the next three years, as the Kingdom steadily diversifies its economy in line with the goals outlined in Vision 2030, revealed a top official. In an interview with Arab News on the sidelines of the Biban 2023 conference, Sultan Al-Hamidi, Chief Business Officer of SDB said that the bank provided SR5 billion of financing to some 9,000 SMEs in 2022 alone. He said they see big growth in SMEs, and the bank has reacted to that. “Of course, we have a plan for the coming three years...we will deploy around SR24 billion.” In 2008, SDB started a segment of SMEs and micro-SMEs. “From that date until today, we successfully deployed around SR16 billion to 40,000 SMEs. And how do we help them? We start with them from idea until expansion,” said Al-Hamidi. Al-Hamidi added that SDB is providing financing to SMEs after a thorough screening process. The bank will provide money in installments, also making sure that entrepreneurs are executing business plans properly. “We start with them from the idea. We interview them, and we make sure that they have very good training for two weeks to make sure that they can do a feasibility study.” The bank also has a center called Dulani which was launched in 2016. “It is considered a clinic for SMEs, both for startups and even in the mid-age of the SME,” he added. As the feasibility study gets completed, the bank will issue the loan, but it will not be deployed completely. “We give the entrepreneur 25 percent, and then we visit. Then we deploy another 25 percent after six months. So, over two years, we have four interactions with the entrepreneur to make sure that the plan which was submitted is really executed,” explained the bank executive. According to Al-Hamidi, Saudi Arabia offers a strong growth opportunity for SMEs, as the Kingdom has a higher success rate average among entrepreneurs compared to global figures. “We did a very good job to make sure that what we are doing is right and correct. And we went with the help of GASTAT (General Authority for Statistics) to see what has happened to the SMEs that we have already financed. And luckily, we have seen a growth in Saudization, growth in employment; 81,000 jobs have been created out of these SMEs,” said Al-Hamidi. He further pointed out that 30 percent of these employees were women, which indicates that the gender gap is reducing due to the growth of SMEs in the Kingdom. Some of the goals outlined in Vision 2030 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.