Foreign direct investment drivers with regard to Saudi Financial Services

Abstract

The economy of Saudi Arabia is rich in oil. It is the world’s leading oil exporter and a prominent member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and a country which embraces Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). FDI is core to increasing the capital and the economic wealth of a country. It is a platform for innovative technologies, advanced management practices, investment, and for the development of an unrestricted market for generating goods and services. Host nations struggle to attract FDI because of the difficulty in recognising FDI drivers that shape FDI inflows. This study identifies significant drivers that influence financial services. These are market drivers, economic drivers, infrastructure drivers and political drivers. Noticeably, previous studies have failed to discuss the complexity of these drivers’ effectiveness in terms of a particular business and a particular country. The objective of this study, therefore, is to analyse the effect of different FDI drivers on FDI inflows with regard to Saudi financial services. This study finds that market drivers are the most effective FDI drivers in terms of Saudi financial services, followed by economic and political drivers. This study supports the findings of previous studies that suggest that infrastructure drivers are not effective in terms of FDI inflows with regard to Saudi financial services.