IslamicFinance.de

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan will head the Kingdom's delegation to the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Islamic Development Bank between April 4-5 in Tunis. The Saudi delegation will include Dr. Ahmad Al-Khulaifi, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Dr. Hamad Al-Bazie, Vice Minister of Finance, Eng. Yousef Al-Bassam, Vice President and Managing Director of the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD). The IDB annual meeting's agenda will comprise of discussion sessions about the 2017 IDB activities report, IDB's institutions annual report and the establishment of the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD). The ISFD aims to alleviate poverty, develop capacity, and eradicate illiteracy, diseases and epidemics in member countries via funding various productive, social and service projects and programs.

Saudi Arabia would be open to relaxing its rules on foreigners investing directly in its stock market to help it get included in global indices, the chairman of the Saudi financial-markets regulatory agency, the Capital Market Authority, said. In his first interview with international media since his appointment in January, Mohammed al-Jadaan also defended the limited trading so far by qualified foreign investors (QFIs) and noted the kingdom was already seeing wider benefits from having direct foreign access to its $470 billion stock market. On June 15, the Saudi stock exchange, the Tadawul, became one of the last major emerging markets to let foreigners buy shares directly.