A recent television report by the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel covering Saudi King Salman’s current tour of Asia, which includes stops in China and Japan, highlights the economic clout of the Kingdom in that region.
Source: Al Arabiya (YouTube)
Date: 26 February, 2017
Transcript:
An Asian tour begun by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdul Aziz has begun, focuses on bilateral cooperation, as well as economic and investment ties.
The tour includes seven states: Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, China, Maldives, the Republic of Brunei, as well as Jordan.
The first stop was Malaysia, which has big economic ties with Saudi (Arabia), with bilateral trade reaching about 32 billion dollars within the last 10 years.
On March the 1st, Indonesia will be the next stop of the tour, a state with whom trade reached 5.4 billion dollars in 2015, and it is expected that the visit will be crowned with the signing of investment deals worth relating to the Aramco company, 6 billion dollars, in addition to other agreements worth 1 billion dollars.
The third stop will be Japan, on the 12th of March. It is one of the main stops of this tour, when considering the size of bilateral trade between the two countries, which reached 32 billion dollars in 2015.
China is the fourth stop of the tour. It has the second largest economy in the world, and is the largest exporter to Saudi Arabia. Bilateral trade between the two countries reached 69.1 billion dollars in 2014.
The tour also covers both Brunei and the Maldives, before he wraps it up in Jordan, which will host the Arab Summit on the 29th of next month.
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