November 18, 2001	Sunday	Ramazan 2, 1422

RIYADH, Nov 17: A Saudi group is planning to invest Saudi Riyal 750 million ($200 million) in the Habib Bank of Pakistan. Prince Sultan Bin Nasser Bin Abdel Aziz, owner and president of Al-Sultan International Group told a Saudi daily here that the company executives are currently conducting the necessary studies in preparation for buying a large stake in the bank.

Prince Sultan is also expected to visit Pakistan along with other group partners soon, once the geo-political situation stabilizes in the region. During the upcoming visit, he would try and complete the necessary arrangements required to formalize the deal. Once the deal is completed, it would be the first mega investment for the group in Pakistan. Prince Sultan confirmed that the group has already allocated $200 million to purchase a significant stake in Pakistan’s premier bank. He however, declined to provide the specific percentage of the bank’s total capital, which the group intends to buy.

Commenting on the overall investment scenario and opportunities in Pakistan, Prince Sultan said the current events have not affected investment opportunities in the country as some financial experts and economists thought they might. He told the Saudi daily that his group is currently also looking for investment opportunities in other sectors in Pakistan, particularly in the field of animal breeding. The group then plans to export these animals to the Kingdom during the Hajj season.

Elaborating on this point, Prince Sultan said feasibility studies carried out on this field prove that the project is feasible, specially in the field of sacrificial sheep project carried out by the Islamic Development Bank every year during the Hajj season. The IDB every year during Haj offers hundreds of thousands of sheep to the Haj pilgrims for offering the sacrifices. The Al-Sultan International Group is however, still to reach an agreement with the IDB on importing the sacrificial animals from Pakistan. He thought importing sheep from Pakistan for the Haj sacrificial project would be competitive and economically feasible.

The group is also currently studying the possibility of benefiting from the Pakistani agricultural experience, in certain fertile regions of the Kingdom, such as Jouf and Jizan. The experiments of cultivating Pakistani mangoes in these areas have turned out to be successful. The Group wants to build up further on this success.

Prince Sultan earlier visited Pakistan in May this year at the invitation of Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz. The Pakistan Executives Group of Saudi Arabia had been instrumental in organizing his earlier visit to Pakistan. On his return from Pakistan the prince had spoken positively of the investment climate in Pakistan and had vowed to invest in various fields in Pakistan. His current statement reflects the group’s insistence on investing in Pakistan despite the turmoil the country is faced with currently due to the situation in Afghanistan.