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Saudi Gazette
22-05-2025
- Business
- Saudi Gazette
Al-Ibrahim: Saudi Arabia develops smart legislation and digital systems to meet needs of investors
Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — Minister of Economy and Planning Faisal Al-Ibrahim emphasized that Saudi Arabia is now opening its doors to the world and has a roadmap in line with Vision 2030. "The Kingdom has developed smart legislation and digital systems to meet the needs of international investors. There are significant changes not only in the regulations and laws governing investment and business, but also in the way business is conducted, adopting smart systems, digital transformation, and regulations focusing on attracting investment," he said while addressing the Saudi-Spanish Business Forum in Riyadh on Thursday. Al-Ibrahim said that Saudi Arabia is advancing toward global competitiveness and a knowledge-based economy. "Since the launch of Vision 2030, private investments in non-oil sectors have grown by 70 percent, fueled by over 900 economic and structural reforms that have boosted investor confidence and streamlined the business environment. This is in addition to issuing more than 36,000 business licenses," he said noting that there are more than 6,000 companies operating in the Kingdom. Referring to the Saudi – Spanish investment relations, Al-Ibrahim said that there have been investments exceeding $3 billion over three decades, with more than 200 Spanish companies operating in the fields of healthcare, agriculture, real estate, and digital technology. "These numbers reflect the strength and momentum of the growing partnership between the Kingdom and Spain, as Spanish expertise plays a vital role in the Kingdom's transformation," he said, adding that the forum aims to explore new opportunities, strengthen partnerships, and formulate further cooperation, with the goal of creating added value across various sectors. The visiting Spanish Minister of Economy, Trade, and Business Carlos Cuerpo Caballero also addressed the forum, which saw the participation of more than 300 Saudi and Spanish officials and investors. The forum was organized by the Federation of Saudi Chambers of Commerce in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Planning and the Ministry of Investment. Earlier on Wednesday, Caballero co-chaired the fourth session of the Saudi-Spanish Joint Commission. The Saudi-Spanish Joint Commission is centered on the shared commitment to fostering a prosperous future partnership, grounded in mutual economic interests and strengthening trade and investment relations between the two countries. Al-Ibrahim andSeveral current and upcoming initiatives were discussed, with a focus on enhancing economic, social, and cultural ties between the Kingdom and Spain. These initiatives highlight the strength of relations and the mutual commitment of both sides to expanding cooperation across various sectors.
Leaders
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Leaders
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Welcomes New Spanish Ambassador
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Cabinet Member, and Climate Envoy, Adel Al-Jubeir, received the newly appointed Ambassador of Spain to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Javier Carbajosa Sánchez, in Riyadh today. During the meeting, Al-Jubeir extended his best wishes to Ambassador Sánchez for success in his new role. Related Topics : Saudi-Spanish Business Forum Kicks off in Madrid, Hailing $3bn Investments, New Agreement Saudi-Spanish Meeting Enhances Tourism Partnership 6 Kings Slam: Riyadh Season Releases Tickets for Elite Tennis Tournament Ireland, Spain, Norway to Recognize Palestinian State Short link : Post Views: 87 Related Stories
Arab News
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Saudi-Spanish artist Hana Maatouk discusses her debut solo show ‘Worlds Within'
RIYADH: Saudi-Spanish artist Hana Maatouk loves giving gifts. As a child, she presented each member of her family with a comic, abstract doodle that she felt embodied them. 'I would narrate my feelings or my response to an event through images,' she tells Arab News. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Now, her work has drawn crowds in New York to her first solo show, the conclusion of a four-month residency with downtown art space Chinatown Soup. Through her work, Maatouk explores Saudi Arabia's evolving socio-political landscape and her personal memories of growing up there. In that solo exhibition, 'Worlds Within,' which took place at NYC Culture Club last month, Maatouk used memory not as the main narrative, but as a way to examine the present. 'Initially, I thought I was going to archive my personal memory and make fantastical images based on my personal narrative. But when I started, I realized that my fascination with memory actually goes beyond myself,' she said. 'Worlds Within' was part of 'Within Reach' — a show encompassing a number of exhibitions celebrating the 2024 class of undergraduate visual arts students from Columbia University, where Maatouk studied, and Barnard College. Maatouk's vibrant, surrealist work was heavily inspired by the 12th-century Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi and his philosophical concept of divine time and space. During her residency at Chinatown Soup, Maatouk intended to create a picture for every significant memory she has, even if it was just a quick sketch. And what she realized in the process was that her relationship to memory is very much rooted in emotions and images rather than language. She came into her residency with the work she had created for her thesis, in which the predominant color was a bold red. Her later works slowly developed out of that, and even referenced the doodles she had made as a child. One piece, a drawing in charcoal, is a depiction of her memory of Umrah, which she performed with her father and brother when she was around 12 years old. There are no photographs of their trip, so the painting was purely based on her memory. 'I still recall the feeling of the white tile beneath my feet. Our pace. My eyes observing, witnessing,' she says. 'When I showed that picture to my brother, he was like, 'Yeah, that's how I felt it as well.'' This piece became 'significant in the development of my visual language,' she adds, 'because of the fleeting figures. If you look towards the top and the peripheries, the 'figure' turns into a simple arc, which becomes a unit on its own. Visually, I reduced the information down to the most basic cell that could still represent a figure but also carry many meanings in its abstraction.' In her discussions with others about her work, a recurring theme was just how unreliable memories can be. This led the artist to explore other questions, such as why we define memory based on what it is not. 'It's almost like we've pitted memory against fact and made it unreliable in its definition. But what if its power is that it can transcend time and space — that it exists, actually, outside of those two things? It incorporates those two things. But it exists beyond them. It's timeless,' she says. While the show consists mainly of paintings, Maatouk has trained in many mediums, including sculpture, installation, printmaking, and photography. 'I don't have one particular medium that is 'it' forever, I think it's just a matter of what language fits the idea that I'm working with,' she says. 'With painting, most recently, I've been dabbling with the fantastical, the fictional, and the mythological, because painting, in its essence, is an illusion. You're making three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane. It already has elements of the fantastical embedded in it. So, when I was writing these narratives about the changes I was observing in Saudi Arabia, it made sense to do it in painting.' As the daughter of a Saudi father and Spanish mother, Maatouk says there are aspects of her cultural background, history, and perspective that she's eager to translate through her work. The challenge is taking these elements outside of their cultural realm to new audiences. 'My audience (for the latest exhibition was) a New York audience, and actually, at the opening, my friend Sarah, who's American, brought a friend to the show, and I asked her which piece resonated, and she pointed to the one of Umrah,' she says. 'What makes a good work for me… I think about it in terms of an emotional transfer. I love to see the work resonating with people in an emotional way, where they feel like something in them was seen in the work.'
