Exclusive interview with Oman's Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Sunday is an important date in the history of Oman and Saudi Arabia’s diplomacy with the official visit of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik.

Sultanate of Oman’s ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, HH Sayyid Faisal bin Turki al Said has been in the post little over six months now and this week sees an important development in bilateral relations and economic cooperation.

Meetings have been followed by the high official delegation visits and the virtual meetings.

“I think the timing could not have been more perfect than now with His Majesty's visit. This is going to basically be concreting of cementing everything that we have been doing and putting a very strong foundation to what is yet to come. In the following weeks and months from now on as well. So this visit, in the context of what we're doing and the context of Saudi Arabia's relationship with Oman comes at a very important time. And I think it will set the standard for what is yet to come in the future as well,” said Sayyid Faisal speaking to Observer from Saudi Arabia.

When asked about the potential areas of cooperation and investment, according to him he said, “As we met the government officials in Saudi Arabia, it was crucial that, first of all, that we understand and go to

what is happening in Saudi Arabia and more specifically in the context of the 2030 vision. And it was very interesting to see the transformation that has happened in Saudi Arabia. But if I were to summarize

what could be the areas of collaboration that have been explored and needs to be further explored,

they would be manufacturing, tourism, logistics, fisheries and technology, which will obviously be complemented by other sectors in the same context. This falls within how we perceive our priority sectors and Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030.

While logistics is one of the potential areas the reports on the road network between Oman and Saudi Arabia reaching the final stages have created excitement. He said, it was around 2016 when it was officially talked about and announced, but what many people do not understand is that there are so many technical challenges and more importantly, from on the side of Saudi Arabia and this is pure because of the nature of the Empty Quarter and the hard environment that is there. “This has been among the top priorities in terms of the discussions that I have been attending with officials from both sides.

It has been apparent that this is going to be one of the top priority focus areas.

Why so?

Because if we were to talk about attracting more businesses, encouraging investments from Saudi Arabia, and vice versa, logistics is significant. The road providing access is one of the world's most important strategic projects that both sides have been committed to. We are extremely hopeful that before the end of the year, it would be officially inaugurated,” he explained.

“Now, this means different things to different people or the general public. That is simply road access that is easy and for businesses, it means so many things-ease of doing business, moving goods, getting closer to providing services and so on. But what is going to be more important is regardless of when this road would be actually officially inaugurated is I think, how businesses and governments or governments would be working

in terms of complementing services that would be required as well,” the ambassador pointed out.

Looking into Saudi Arabia's achievements in diversification Sayyid Faisal said, “In December while in Oman when we were sitting with a team looking into the vision 2040 we created a comparison

between the two visions and not looking into the obvious things of the economy.

There are so many common denominators between the two in terms of the approach of the business, in terms of the projects, and to our priority sectors, in terms of the programs on the application.

"What I have strongly noticed, and this was important when we came for a quick business meeting for two days while in Ithra and when I came in as an ambassador in 2021, there was a huge change in terms of how the government is basically operating, in terms of how they are setting the scene for shaping up the future of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia - e-government integrating so making it easier for the West to do business currently within Saudi Arabia on attracting foreign investments and multinational companies."

This notion of moving up the culture of the private sector and the values of the private sector and how the private sector does business with the public sector.

"The government has been more dynamic, all of the factors that show the sincerity and the commitment whether it is how it was in the leadership, within those ministries and the top management as well. This vision is shaping the future of Saudi Arabia.”

He added, with the commitment of diversifying and lessening the dependency on oil as a key driver for the economy.

“This phase of this relationship that I see as the golden phase, and especially for the development of business and economy. It is important to see how and what drives, the government officials and the businesses in Saudi Arabia and what that would entail being acquired as well from the Omanis to share the same values and interests, because honestly, eventually we don't have the luxury of time. We are now facing challenges at the regional level

and at our own national level because of COVID 19, because of the drop of oil prices, etc,” he said. According to the ambassador, it is highly significant that Saudi Arabia has completed recently,

almost five years since the launch of the new vision and the drive towards changes.

“I think those five years are very important to us as we launch in towards the 10th five-year plan and begin our journey of 2040.

There are so many learnings that we can take and share. Our brothers and colleagues in Saudi Arabia are more than happy to share.

In a nutshell, we don't need to reinvent so many things. We can actually be sharing those experiences of building capacities and moving at a much faster pace towards enabling the mentioned sectors and the collaboration between those two sectors in Oman and in Saudi Arabia.”

“If you go back and remember back in January with the conclusion of an earlier summit and it was mentioned that to see it is to be looking into economic complementation of each other, and that's very important.

We cannot afford as the GCC nations to go into competing with one another in terms of what we need to do or in the sense of being perceiving that each need to create something that is unique to the nation.

So, first of all, it is important to complement

the challenge. We have been spending a lot of time in understanding what could be those common denominators and the common grounds that we need to look into.”

He took the example of why is tourism important for Oman and what is the tourism sector in Oman?

"We have to look at both sides not only in terms of attracting foreign investment but all of the other variables that influence positively or even affected negatively. And then looking into those expectations and wishes and then trying to see what Saudi Arabia is doing as well and how and only by sitting together and discussing those elements within divisions, we can reach to those factors that would create a win.

It's important to create a win-win situation. Some people think that we're only about foreign direct investments. If we actually sit together and design a framework that is efficient, that is measurable,

then the end result ultimately would be the foreign direct investments that would be resulted in how much money you bring into the country both ways and more importantly creation of jobs.

So there needs to be a focus on the quick, immediate wins that we need to create and the on the medium to the long term as well, within each of those sectors.”

When asked how long does he think it will take for these outcomes to come into functioning he said we need to look at what is going on.

“You know with Corona and the pandemic basically has taught us that we can do a lot of the work online and virtually. And we have in many ways saved a lot of time and money. But there comes a time where

the sooner things get better, we know teams can

physically move across and work to save us a lot of time. So taking that on board and what the next phase would be immediately after the official visit is, first of all, shaping and finalizing the general framework that will govern our work within those sectors that we have highlighted.

And then translating that framework into an action plan that can be measured within the time frame.

"To be honest, I think in the next three months would be crucial to conclude the framework of the agreements. Whatever is left of the year would be more in terms of moving it towards the activation. And if you were to predict in the timeframe or if we're all working hard enough, we should be celebrating before the end of next year.

Successful business partnerships and that we can be quantified in terms of numbers, how much investments have we actually got, how many people actually received more training, building capacities and other results.

So, realistically speaking, looking at how bad scenarios are to be with all of those variables.

that is affecting how we do business. I would say it requires at least the coming five to six months to be able to hold out a very efficient, transparent, effective, execution plan.

He said activation should be starting by the beginning of 2022 and before the end of 2022. We should not be celebrating those small success stories and building on the next stories as well.

"Looking at a timeline he said the next 15 years would see progress on the road and the second big thing would be the collaboration for the first time, with the committee that would be officially announced between the two nations, responsible to supervise at the macro level everything that would be coming and cascading from it." That would include the signing of agreements, activation, and follow-up - meeting regularly to ensure that each and every entity that would be responsible within those sectors does what is expected of it within the timeframe as well."

"The next thing we would be celebrating would be the signing of those bilateral agreements again and within those sectors. But as you know, sometimes it takes time to make sure that sort of everything falls in place,

especially in the legal framework and all the entitlements from both sides,” he noted.

He added that in getting more foreign direct investments there is so much that needs to be done for the reforms, the regulations, how the governments work, being more efficient, how the general public is being responsible towards this with warmth and openness towards this relationship as well “We would be at this stage focusing on how do we draw a clear line between who would be managing the expected investment portfolio and attracting investments and at what level? Second of all, what would be clearly the role of the private sector at the trade level and services that they have especially when it comes to the role of chambers of commerce.

And in the case of Saudi Arabia, Things may be kind of overlapping or replicating.

So we need to be making sure that each entity that is responsible for anything that has to do with commerce, trade, exchange of goods, services, investments to make sure that we are creating alignments not overlapping or having contradictions in terms of what we do . If we do that successfully, then any numbers and any statistics that you look into would obviously be on a positive end and would grow in a more systematic and organic manner as well.