Saudi Arabia Looks Past Oil in Attempt to Diversify

By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: December 13, 2005

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The ultimate oil state is seeking to shift its economy away from oil.

Saudi Arabia may be experiencing its third oil boom in three decades but it is also undergoing an economic revolution that its leaders hope will finally insulate it from the oil producer's curse: the next price collapse.

~snip~
The nation's leaders, of course, have made similar vows before to translate their vast oil wealth into a more diversified economy. Will this time really be different?

There are signs that it may be. Unnoticed by many outsiders, the Saudi private sector has flourished in recent years, thanks to structural changes started by King Abdullah in the late 1990's when he was crown prince and oil prices were at $10 a barrel.

~snip~Analysts at the Samba Financial Group in Riyadh expect the economy to grow by 6.5 percent this year thanks to record oil prices, which have helped fuel the third consecutive year of rapid expansion. But the private sector, which also stands apart from the state-run oil industry, has outpaced the rest of the economy for 7 of the last 11 years and is expected to grow 7.4 percent this year.

"The diversification of our national income and our economy away from oil is key to our well being," said Abdullah Alireza, a minister without portfolio and a member of the Supreme Economic Council. "It's absolutely key."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/business/worldbusiness/13saudiecon.html?hp&ex=1134536400&en=e9df9ca38bf8e258&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal boasted in Dubai earlier this week about his ability to change the news content that viewers around the world see on television.

In early September 2005, Bin Talal bought 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp. This made the Fifth richest man on the Forbes World's Richest People, the fourth largest voting shareholder in News Corp., the parent of Fox News. News Corp. is the world's leading newspaper publisher in English. It operates more than 175 newspapers, in the UK, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the US, and distributes more than 40 million papers per week. In addition, News Corp. owns and operates an international collection of TV outlets, radio stations, magazines, book publishers and film studios.

After bin Talal purchased his voting shares in News Corp., on September 23, 2005, he stated in an advertising supplement to the New York Times, “When I invest in a group like CITICROUP, the Four Seasons, the News Corp. or Time Warner, my objective is not to manage those companies.” But this is not quite accurate, considering the Prince’s December 5, 2005 statement given to Middle East Online regarding his ability to change what viewers see on Fox News. Covering the riots in Paris last November, Fox ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots." Bin Talal was not happy. "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty," he said. "Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

News Corp did not comment, but referred us to FOX NEWS, which responded with the following statement: “Over the course of our extensive coverage, it became clear that the Paris riots were caused by a number of different factors which we characterized in various ways as we continued to report the story and discover new information. In fact, one of our contributors, Father Morris, who was in Paris covering this story, was prominently on our air saying this was a cultural assimilation issue, not a religious one.”

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20490

In other words, they want us to drive to our own destruction.

These folks are not our friends.

And I'm sick of the mantrra "it's just business". You CANNOT do business with people who are not your friends, for they do not mean you well.

That's why China now also exports far more IT-related services and electronic goods than we do... and they can't blame Clinton, it started with reagan and they're sure as hell not pissing on * for allowing the same either.

"...I drive a car, my son drives a jet plane. His son will drive a camel."
-- Saudi saying

I suppose that after the oil runs out, they'll have to start doing their own housework again. :shrug:

They could be the Halliburton of torture.