Amr Abdullah Al-Dabbagh

His Excellency Mr. Amr Al-Dabbagh is the Governor and Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Economic Cities Agency (ECA), with the rank of Minister. In the 6 years since he assumed the position in March 2004, SAGIA has seen the value of investment licenses grow to 40 times the total since it was created in 2000.

Al-Dabbagh has been lauded by government and private sector leaders for his visionary and highly ambitious leadership capacity, which has recently earned him Man of Year by Arabian Business Magazine, Global Leader of Tomorrow by the Executive Board of the World Economic Forum and the Editorial Board of Worldlink Magazine, the Leadership Award of the 12th Arab Economic Forum.

Since 2005 SAGIA has been the architect behind the launch of an entirely new global product called “Economic Cities.” These super-high-tech, 100% privately held total living and investing solutions will by 2020 have added over US$150 billion to the Saudi GDP, 1.5 million jobs, raised the per capital GDP from 13,000 to 33,500 and provided the ultimate living destinations to over 4.5 million people. Four of six have already been launched, with a total value of the five at over US$80 billion. These include King Abdullah Economic City in Rabigh, Prince AbdulAziz Bin Musaed Economic City in Hail, Knowledge Economic City in Madina, and Jizan Economic City in Jizan.

Under His Excellency’s leadership the Kingdom has seen an increase in its global competitiveness rankings in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report from 67 in 2005 to 11 in 2010 out of 183 countries ranked. SAGIA’s ultimate objective is encapsulated in two numbers, 10x10, which is to put the Kingdom among the top most competitive nations globally by 2010. Toward this goal Governor Al-Dabbagh launched the National Competitiveness Center (NCC) in 2005, and also initiated the first ever comprehensive FDI survey in the Kingdom, with concluding data being used to identify and repair investment scenario weaknesses. (In 2006/7/8/9 UNCTAD ranked the Kingdom #1 in the region for attracting FDI, and in 2009 8th globally.)

In 2006 the Governor took another step toward increased competitiveness by initiating an extensive study of the tax incentives offered to investors in 55 countries around the world and recommending tax credits as an incentive to attract FDI into the Kingdom’s Economic Cites and less developed regions. All recommendations were approved by the Ministry of Finance and this represented the first change to the national tax code since its introduction in 2001.

Toward additional progress on the competitiveness side, His Excellency launched the Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) in 2006. The GCF is the region’s most prestigious event, attended by the globe’s leading political, economic, and social figures. This annual meeting of top business executives, international political leaders, selected intellectuals, and academics who share an interest in global competitiveness, has been attended by such global leaders as Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation; Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister of the UK; Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE; Michael Dell, Founder and CEO, Dell Inc.; Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO, Nissan Motor Company; John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems; Julie Marton-Lefevre, Director General, IUCN; Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever; Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia; Deborah Wince-Smith, President, Council on Competitiveness; James Turley, Chairman and CEO, Ernst and Young; Mary Robinson, 7th President of Ireland; Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP; Shinzo Abe, 90th Prime Minster of Japan, and hundreds more.

On the funds and VC side, Al-Dabbagh in 2005 seeded the venture capital and private equity investment industry in Saudi Arabia by launching four sector-focused funds managed completely by the private sector and raising nearly US$1.7 billion of capital in the process (all with foreign equity and HR components).

His Excellency has been continually boosting the Kingdom’s capacity for international economic cooperation by 1) an ambitious program of bilateral cooperation which entails the signing of at least ten BITs a year, and 2) by launching a series of overseas offices, nine in total to date, all but one of which are staffed by women (putting SAGIA closer to its 50x10 goal, 50% female staff by 2010.)

Just after taking over as Governor, Al-Dabbagh augmented SAGIA’s capacity to serve individual investors by launching new “One-Step Shops”, and by introducing tailored investor facilitation packages in the form of Public Private Partnerships with key investors. Presently 22 PPPs are in operation.

Al-Dabbagh has been credited for his quarterly contribution to global business information resources with the launch of THINK Magazine, SAGIA’s quarterly publication