Riyadh, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, represented by the Minister of Finance Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Jadaan participated yesterday in the virtual session “Preparing for the Future” as part of the activities of the World Economic Forum “The Davos Agenda”.
In his opening speech, Al-Jadaan stressed that the past two years have provided many lessons to build economic resilience and improve preparedness for the future, citing the need to take deliberate and decisive data-based measures to reduce risks while balancing public health and social and economic needs.
He added, “The Group of Twenty agreed to form a joint task force from the ministries of health and finance to ensure the world is better prepared for the future, and it is important that we support these efforts,” pointing that Covid-19 pandemic provided us with a clear lesson that no one country can fight the epidemic alone since any pandemic requires greater international cooperation.
The Minister of Finance also clarified that the transformation in the field of energy and sustainable development are two main factors to be able to build a resilient global economy, but the threat that is often ignored is the need to ensure energy security, so that the matter is not negatively affected by the transformation.
Al-Jadaan stressed that the G20 is working with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral institutions to find a way to better prepare for potential crises in the future by continuing structural reforms and managing risks, noting that in the past, it took years to produce vaccines, yet today, with collective cooperation, whether from the private sector or the government, we were able to deal well with the crisis, we were able to provide support to low-income countries and we were able to provide relief efforts in agreement with the G20 and Paris Club, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to distribute the equivalent of $650 billion from its special drawing rights to support liquidity.
The Minister of Finance further said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia supports sustainability while ensuring energy security and the inevitability of moving to a green and sustainable global economy, based on a flexible and thoughtful approach, to ensure energy security and economic stability in the long term.
It is worth mentioning that The Davos Agenda was held from 17 to 21 January, during which the participants hosted a series of virtual sessions that were in line with the annual meeting’s goal of guiding world leaders on the necessities of the coming year.
Source: Saudi Press Agency
