Saudi Arabia will soon open an office in India’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), Saudi Investment Minister Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih said.
“We will send a strong delegation from Saudi Arabia to India in the next few weeks to set up a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ office in GIFT City,” Al-Falih said at the Saudi-India Investment Forum in New Delhi.
“The future lies with the young people, with the startups, with the innovators, with the entrepreneurs, and we have to make sure that we don’t focus all our attention on the big national champions and the big multinationals. We spend a lot of time “irrigating the fertile soil of entrepreneurship, because in 10 to 15 years some of them will be the national champions of our nations,” the Saudi minister also said.
GIFT City is India’s tax-neutral financial services hub and an under-construction business district in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat. It is India’s first operational greenfield smart city and international financial services hub, promoted as a greenfield project by the Government of Gujarat.
While speaking to the Investment Minister on stage, Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal also stated that India will explore opening an office in Riyadh.
The Sovereign Wealth Fund, also known as the Public Investment Fund, is an investment pool that manages more than $700 billion in Saudi government funds. It invests these funds in businesses, real estate and other ventures at home and abroad to generate profits for the benefit of the Saudi economy.
Established by royal decree in 1971, the fund is currently headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and has offices in Hong Kong, London and New York.
