CFC seeks Saudi Arabia’s help for more investments in Yemen and beyond.
H.E. Mr. Ziad M. Al Atiyah, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Netherlands, is seen with Managing Director Ambassador Sheikh Mohammed Belal at the Secretariat of the CFC. They discussed the activities of the Common Fund for Commodities as well as ways of future cooperation at this challenging time of global polycrisis.
During the discussion, Ambassador Belal briefed Ambassador Al Atiyah on the meetings and conversations he had during his recent visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in January 2023, as well as on the recent participation of the CFC at the Fifth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in Doha, Qatar, this week. This, once in a decade event, adopted the road map for development interventions in the least developed countries for next ten years and aptly named the roadmap as “Doha program of action (DPoA)”.
CFC MD also elaborated on the introduction of the Agricultural Commodity Transformation (ACT) Fund, erstwhile referred to as CIIF, and narrated the outline of CFC’s own road map for alleviation of poverty in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) , Land Locked Developed Countries (LLDCs) and beyond. As the ACT Fund has now been introduced, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is welcome to join this impact investment fund as an anchor investor and recommending the same to the private sectors as well.
Ambassador Belal congratulated Ambassador Ziad for Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented activities of humanitarian and development assistance by a host of Saudi Agencies like the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief), the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen (SDRPY) etc. All of these efforts will surely help the progress of easing the commodity dependence globally, added Ambassador Belal.
In response, H.E. Mr. Al Atiyah mentioned that he has taken note of the discussion as well as noted the compliments for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its support and contribution to the CFC. Ambassador Al Atiyah expressed his appreciation for the good work of CFC and hoped that further collaboration could be explored in the future.
Ambassador Belal assured to pursue more innovative outreaches in the days to come to make the services of CFC available to as many people as possible in the commodity dependent developing world as poverty and hunger are regrettably showing a reversing trend globally.