Lunch with the Fabulous Basel

My first business lunch in the kingdom was with the incredible Basel Al-Jabr, CEO of MASIC. Here is a nice picture of Basel I found on the internet from a few years ago. He is a very insightful and articulate guy. He is from Riyadh, but after undergraduate work he spent a few years in the states in L.A. preparing for and completing his MBA. When I asked him about Saudi's future he named five important sectors.

Oil and gas - obviously still the lifeblood of the kingdom's economy, but there is still lots of room for new technologies to be deployed and increasing efficency in production in years to come.

Construction - right now there are more projects than available companies in Saudi Arabia, Basel thought there was a $120 billion back log in projects.

Middle income and low income housing - Over half of Saudi's population is below the age of 25. In the coming years, these people will getting married and buying a house. I personally hope they build the housing, so these kids don't have to live with their parents.

Education - Saudi's take education very seriously. There is a higher concentration of American trained Ph.D.s in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) than anywhere else in the world. There will be a continued effort to educate the young population and also to improve graduate studies in the kingdom.

Consumer goods - he didn't give a lot of explanations, but if KSA continues to grow this would be an obvious candidate. We also got into a discussion of KSA's income distribution, and the middle class seems to be much more prevalent than I had thought before I came. I will have to try to find some numbers, but that is certainly the feel I get from the city.

Telecomm - lots of room for growth here. Most everyone has a cellphone, but the internet is not nearly as pervasive. My uncle just purchased internet for his apartment and bought 12 months of unlimited internet for $56 a month that is running at 603 kbps. I think it's close to state of the art here, and it is wireless (wimax) and easy to set up, but slow.

I really enjoyed meeting Basel. He invited me to join him at a very old traditional restaurant, where we'll sit on the floors and eat the traditional food from Riyadh. I can't wait.