MT Desk: Saudi Arabia’s minister of commerce Majid bin Abdullah Al-Qasabi held 12 meetings with ministers and officials of the G20 countries in India over the past two days, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Al-Qasabi, who is also chairman of the board of directors at the General Authority of Foreign Trade, spoke with the ministers on the sidelines of the G20 Trade and Investment Ministers’ meeting, which concluded on Friday.

The meetings touched on developing relations, enhancing trade and economic cooperation, developing opportunities, and translating them into tangible partnerships, SPA said.

During the session on “Trade for Growth and Prosperity and WTO Reforms,” Al-Qasabi reviewed the impact of Vision 2030 reforms on the Saudi economy, which launched significant initiatives to increase the integration of the Saudi economy both regionally and globally. 

He added that growth of the Kingdom’s foreign trade in the past year amounted to $172 billion and that the volume of non-oil exports grew by 40 percent between 2018-2022, amounting to $28.7 billion, while the value of loans provided by the Saudi Export-Import Bank stood at $4.6 billion.

The minister added that the total number of small and medium enterprises in the Kingdom had reached 1.2 million and the annual growth of e-commerce reached 33% between 2016-2022.

Al-Qasabi also said the Kingdom has enhanced its competitiveness, evidenced by its ranking of second among the G20 countries in digital competitiveness, per the Digital Riser 2021 report and ranked sixth among 50 emerging countries in the "Agility" index for emerging markets for the year 2022.

This year’s G20 meeting will be hosted in India next month under the theme “One Earth, One Family, One Future.”