Social Development Bank (SDB) has underlined its commitment to enhancing entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia by allocating SAR 24 billion to finance entrepreneurs, and small and emerging enterprises during the next three years, aiming to empower entrepreneurs and supporting them to contribute to providing an effective and influential role and enhancing the role of small and emerging enterprises in the Saudi economy.
Mr. Ibrahim Al-Rashid, CEO, of the Social Development Bank, said, “SDB has allocated SAR 24 billion to provide more financing support to enterprises through our products and programs. This will be crucial to providing more citizens with stepping stones to self-employment and sustainable success. SDB’s strategy is geared toward raising economic productivity. The bank has set out to achieve this by providing access to programs and products to support small and emerging enterprises, develop services, offer financing alternatives in line with targeted sectors’ needs, and encourage economic activity.”
“SDB has an ongoing role to monitor social and economic development in the Kingdom and ensure Saudi citizens are adequately supported to succeed. Bank’s initiatives are designed to provide training, bespoke consulting, and guidance programs by the Dulani Center, in addition to Jaadah30 which provides business incubators and accelerators to empower SMEs,” he added.
Notably, SDB’s studies have revealed that — in 2022 — the funding provided by the bank to local small and emerging enterprises reached SAR 5 billion, while the number of entities that benefitted from financing services reached 9 thousand entities. SDB is fully committed to supporting the Kingdom SMEs sector — in line with its goals and Vision 2030 — by providing financing solutions to individuals and enterprises.
Furthermore, the Bank signed 11 agreements with multiple stakeholders, the agreements aim to develop and support SMEs as one of the most important streams of the economic and social development process. Additionally, as part of its efforts to support comprehensive development empowerment, 6 financing contracts were signed for entrepreneurs to drive economic growth.
BIBAN23 brings together 120-plus empowering entities to take part and contribute to the conference, to enrich young people with creative entrepreneurial ideas. Crucially, the gathering is in keeping with the goals of Vision 2030 and the Kingdom’s long-term objective of raising SMEs’ contribution to the nation’s GDP to 35%.