Saudi Arabia puts AI at the core of its digital transformation: deputy minister

RIYADH: Digital system integrator Orange Business is set to roll out “Smart City-as-a-Service” in Saudi Arabia, aiming to drive significant financial and time savings, a senior company official said.

Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of LEAP 2025 in Riyadh, Mohammed Al-Jeraisy, managing director for Saudi Arabia and Africa, said the service will develop Smart City applications for cloud deployment, capitalizing on the sector’s rapid growth.

The Saudi Smart Cities market is projected to expand considerably, with revenue expected to hit $560 million by 2025, according to data firm Statista. Globally, the US is forecasted to generate the highest revenue in the segment at $27.06 billion in the same year.

“This is something that is known — it’s a challenge. When you implement a Smart City solution, deployment is costly and time-consuming. These projects typically take years to develop and build. What a Smart City-as-a-Service solution does today is help customers adopt the solution quickly, saving both time and costs,” Al-Jeraisy said.

He added that the new model could cut costs by 40 to 60 percent and reduce adoption time by up to 80 percent.

Al-Jeraisy also highlighted the flexibility of the subscription-based model, which allows customers to choose specific Smart City services as needed.

“When it comes to Smart City services, there are many — plenty of them. You can think of major services like a city’s command and control center, which is essential. You also need solutions for the environment and applications for traffic management. Today, you can start using these services immediately and access them through the platform,” Al-Jeraisy said. 

The model enables customers to opt in and out of services as required. “You can subscribe to the service today, use it for as long as you need, and stop whenever you decide. You can then go for another service. I think that’s one of the key benefits we offer to customers,” he added.

Despite the name, Smart City-as-a-Service is not limited to cities, Al-Jeraisy said. “It can be used for campuses, stadiums, events, and even universities because what truly matters are the applications and use cases we build on the platform,” Al-Jeraisy said, noting that both small and large cities, as well as airports and schools, can benefit from these services.

Saudi Arabia is emerging as a leader in Smart City and AI adoption, he noted, adding that the global adoption rate for Smart City-as-a-Service currently stands at 33 percent and is expected to rise as more customers recognize its benefits.

Orange Business has been involved in large-scale Smart City projects in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East for more than a decade. It is engaged in major regional developments, including projects in Egypt and the Arabian Gulf states, and contributes to the SMART Africa initiative to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development across the continent.

The company signed a deal in September 2023 with the King Abdullah Financial District Development & Management Company to design, build, and operate a Smart City platform integrating existing digital technologies at Saudi Arabia’s prime business district, KAFD. 

The platform leverages AI and data analytics while providing Digital Master Systems Integration services. Orange Business is also orchestrating a partner ecosystem to drive new use cases and seamless integration.

KARACHI: Pakistan has taken the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on board over its targets under a $7 billion loan program it secured in September, a finance ministry official said on Tuesday, days before the arrival of an IMF mission in the South Asian nation for the program’s first review.
A successful review, expected later this month or in early March, would see the Washington-based lender release around $1 billion tranche to cash-strapped Pakistan, which seeks to boost its foreign exchange reserves to achieve the IMF’s threshold of three months import cover.
IMF bailouts are critical for Pakistan which narrowly avoided a sovereign default in June 2023 by clinching a last-gasp, $3 billion IMF loan and is currently navigating a tricky path to economic recovery.
“We are on track,” Khurram Schehzad, an adviser at the Pakistani finance ministry, told Arab News. “The IMF is on board on the targets and benchmarks that we have achieved as well as only a few we are chasing. We are fully prepared to go into the review process.”
The statement is expected to allay investor concerns about Pakistan meeting the IMF’s conditions to reform its economy by cutting on energy subsidies, broadening the tax net to agriculture, real estate and retail sectors, and privatizing loss-making, state-owned enterprises like the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
“We are working on the taxation side by bringing in the under-taxed and non-taxed sectors into the net by broadening, deepening and widening it,” Schehzad said.
Provincial governments in Pakistan’s Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces have recently enacted laws to impose taxes on farm incomes, fulfilling one of the IMF’s requirements.
Since averting an imminent default on its external debt in 2023, Pakistan is now keeping its current account in check primarily through containing imports. The country’s exports rose 10% to $19.6 billion in the last seven months till January, while it is keeping tabs on imports that increased by 7% to $33 billion, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
“Our balance of payment position is going to be manageable this year,” said Schehzad, who believes population growth and climate change are the two biggest challenges facing Pakistan’s economy.
The country achieved a current account surplus of $1.2 billion from July 2024 till December 2024 and is expecting to receive a record $35 billion worker remittances by June 2025. It expects IT exports to increase to $4 billion this year.
As jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party carries out countrywide protests to demand the return of its “stolen” mandate in the last general election, PM Shehbaz Sharif’s government is trying to shore up the fragile economy, which Schehzad said is expected to expand in the range of 3% to 3.5% this financial year ending in June.
Pakistan’s central bank has slashed the interest rate by a cumulative 1,000 basis points to 12% since June to spur economic growth, thanks to the easing inflation that rose 2.41% last month, the lowest in more than nine years.
“We are keeping an eye on the prices of all essential items that should be reflective of the prevailing inflation numbers, so to close the gap between numbers and on-ground prices,” the finance adviser said.
The pace of price hike is expected to ease further in the months ahead, which will create more room for the central bank to decrease the rate of bank borrowing.
“We are giving priority to long-term sustainability of the economy over short term reliefs,” Schehzad said.
The Pakistani government is striving to turn the hard-earned economic stability with fiscal and external consolidation into a growth that is export-led and driven by productive and efficient investments primarily by the private sector, according to the finance adviser.
The government is working to break the so-called boom-and-bust cycle Pakistan’s economy has been “suffering from in the past many years now” and targets 6% growth and beyond by 2029, he added.