The start of the third edition of the Public Investment Fund and the private sector forum

The work of the third edition of the “Public Investment Fund and the Private Sector Forum” and the accompanying exhibition began at the King Abdulaziz International Convention Center in Riyadh, which will continue over the course of February 12-13 of the year 2025.
The forum, which is a platform that is the largest of its kind in the Kingdom for the private sector, aims to enhance partnerships and opportunities for cooperation with the local private sector.
The forum is in line with the directives of His Royal Highness Prince Muhammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Public Investment Fund -may God protect him -in involving local and international investors in the continuous growth of the strategic sectors in the Kingdom, and increasing the contribution of the private sector In GDP to 65% in line with Saudi Arabia 2030 vision.
The number of participants in the forum this year will reach more than 10,000 participants.
The forum, which will be held under the slogan “joint ambition for a prosperous economy”, will witness the presence of a number of ministers and senior officials from the fund and its portfolio companies, and a number of representatives of government agencies, along with the most prominent leaders of private sector companies in various strategic sectors in the Kingdom, in addition to more than 100 pavilions For the Fund Portfolio companies.
“The private sector forum is a platform to enhance cooperation and partnership opportunities between the Public Investment Fund and its portfolio companies with the local private sector,” said Jerry Todd, head of the National Development Department of the Public Investment Fund.
He added: “In its third edition, the forum continues to grow in terms of size, scale and ambition, to reflect the Fund’s efforts to enhance communication with the private sector, enable it and increase its contribution to reaching a more diverse economy that has local supply chains backed by advanced technology.”
For two days, the forum will discuss a number of axes in a set of dialogue sessions and workshops, which focus on exploring opportunities that contribute to enabling and enhancing the role of the private sector, in line with the Fund’s strategy to increase its contribution and its wallet companies in local content to 60%.
The forum will display the initiatives and programs of the Public Investment Fund aimed at enhancing the partnership with the private sector, including the local content development program, “Mashama”, which was launched by the Public Investment Fund in the first version of the forum.
The program aims to increase the contribution of the fund and its portfolio companies in the local content, and the program contributed to the rise in spending on local content from 69 billion riyals in 2020 to 153 billion riyals in 2023, an increase of 122 %.
Besides, the “Industrial Business Cassation” program was launched in September last year with the aim of enabling emerging industrial companies, as the program received 350 requests, 13 of which were chosen from small and medium -sized companies.
The program aims to develop competitive and innovative products and services for joint companies, and to develop their business on a large scale, by providing training and counseling sessions provided by experts in the field of industry, strategy, operational excellence, sales and sustainability, by activating communication channels with the Fund Portfolio companies, which contributed to the signature of 12 A commercial agreement, in addition to two agreements aimed at developing products with the Fund’s portfolio companies.
The fund launched the “private sector platform”, which is a gateway for private sector companies to build partnerships with the fund and its portfolio companies in the strategic sectors in the Kingdom, and more than 2000 investors have been registered in the platform since its launch in 2023. In addition to the “Contractors Financing” program, the first of its kind in Kingdom and the region, which aims to facilitate financing solutions between the Fund and the private sector.
This year’s forum will witness the announcement of the winners of the “Design Contribution” competition in cooperation with the Roshen Group; To enable the talents of Saudi designers, enhance the use of local materials in real estate construction and development projects.
The contestants distributed the path of “rising architects”, which included 373 Saudi participants (107 teams) from 24 universities, and the path of “startups design companies”, which included more than 160 companies across the Kingdom.