GE announces $15bn of business deals with Saudi

Saudi-US trade volume exceeds $37bn

US technology and engineering conglomerate GE said yesterday it had signed $15 billion of business deals with Saudi Arabia as part of the kingdom’s drive to diversify its economy beyond oil. It came as dozens of senior US business executives met Saudi counterparts at a conference coinciding with the visit of President Donald Trump to Riyadh. The agreements, which involve almost $7 billion of goods and services from GE itself, range from the power and healthcare sectors to the oil and gas industry and mining, GE said. Some of the deals are memorandums of understanding which would require further agreements to materialize.

Among the projects, GE will help make Saudi power generation more efficient and provide digital technology to the operations of oil firm Saudi Aramco, aiming to create $4 billion of annual productivity improvements at Aramco. It will cooperate in medical research and training.

Bilateral trade

Volume of trade exchanges between Saudi Arabia and the United States amounted to 142 billion riyal ($37.68 billion) in 2016, the Ministry of Commerce and Investment said. It said in a report issued yesterday that the kingdom’s exports to the US, last year, reached 65.6 billion riyal (approximately $17.48 billion), while its imports from America amounted to 75.8 billion riyal (some $20.2 billion).

Therefore, the trade balance tilted in favor of the US by 10.1 billion riyal (around $2.69 billion). The US came second among 10 nations with imports from the kingdom and the first among states with exports to it in 2016. Oil by-products, urea, raw aluminum and ethylene glycol were the main exported materials to the US while the imports were dominated by spare parts, jet and care engines. Number of US-Saudi companies operating in the kingdom reached 588. Branches of American firms working in the Gulf country amounted to 175. Riyadh signed in May 2016 a memo with an American conglomerate for investments worth $3 billion in strategic sectors. In aviation, an agreement was reached to step up a joint company to produce Blackhawk helicopters in the kingdom. Last year also witnessed signing accords for setting up a Saudi company for marketing small satellites for space imaging. The report included several other mega accords in addition to the $20 billion partnership between Aramco and Dow Chemical. — Agencies