Saudi Arabia may set up sovereign wealth fund office in Gujarat's GIFT City

Saudi Arabia on Monday said it will consider setting up an office of its sovereign wealth fund (SWF) in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) to facilitate investments.

Investment minister of Saudi Arabia Khalid A. Al Falih said that within the next few weeks, he would send a strong delegation to GIFT City to explore the opportunity.

He said this in response to a request by Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal.

GIFT City in Gujarat is a multi-purpose special economic zone for financial services. He said that the delegation will explore Gift City or Mumbai or New Delhi.

The Saudi minister also offered to set up a digital and physical space in Riyadh for Indian startups to access markets, partners and funding.

Saudi investments in India stood at USD 3.22 billion from April 2000 to June 2023.

Khalid said the investments were made by government-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF) in some of the bigger Indian companies.