Chairman of Capital Markets Authority Mohammed bin Abdullah El-Kuwaiz has stressed that the Financial Sector Conference held in Riyadh on March 15 and 16, as an international regional platform, reflects the strength of Saudi Arabia’s economy, the largest in the region, and underscores its importance as the new financial services hub.
He said that the conference is organized by Financial Sector Development Programme partners as one of the main programs of the Saudi Vision 2030, represented by the Ministry of Finance, Saudi Central Bank and the Capital Markets Authority. More than 3,000 local and international decision makers in the financial sector took part in the conference, discussing renewed challenges, including the development of the sector, and keeping up with changes through innovative debates, discussions and opinions.
The chairman stressed that when talking about Security Token Offering (STO), it should be noted that in a short period of time it had multiple uses, adding that the question is how the size of this market has reached over $1 trillion and more than 300 million investors globally.
El-Kuwaiz said: “We have seen rapid growth in the past five years from approximately zero to 150 companies in the financial technology sector, worth SAR4 billion, which has contributed to providing more than 2,000 jobs in the Saudi economy.”
He added that since the launch of the Saudi Vision 2030, “we have been aiming to be one of the largest financial markets in the world”, and that has been achieved with the listing of Aramco shares, through which “we are ranked ninth globally”, which underscored the importance of expanding such listings. He also noted that the authority currently has about 80 applications for new submissions.
–SPA
Source: Saudi Press Agency