King participates in Sun Valley forum

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania, has participated in the Sun Valley Economic Forum in Idaho, the US, attended by American and international business leaders.

As part of the forum, King Abdullah participated in a session on Jordan that highlighted the Kingdom’s potential to become a regional and international ICT hub.

The session, organised by American businessman Barry Diller, who chairs IAC/InterActiveCorp, covered Jordan’s plans to stimulate economic growth, improve the business and investment environment, and develop the ICT sector, such as REACH 2025: Jordan’s Digital Economy Action Plan.

During the discussion, attended by senior executives from major ICT companies like Amazon, Apple, eBay, Cisco, Intel, PayPal, and Twitter, Aman Bhutani, president of Brand Expedia Group, one of the largest online travel companies in the world, highlighted the company’s experience in Jordan and the factors that encouraged it to open a software development office in the Kingdom.

Expedia Group, active in more than 30 countries around the world, had announced at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa 2017 at the Dead Sea in May its plan to open the software development office and employ Jordanian developers and engineers.

The senior executives who attended the session expressed their wishes to visit Jordan to get acquainted with the conditions of companies there and the ICT skills available, in order to assess investment opportunities and the potential to open offices for their companies in the Kingdom.

On the sidelines of the Sun Valley forum, His Majesty met separately with a number of business leaders, and heads and representatives of major US and international companies.

Discussions covered means to boost Jordan’s cooperation with these companies, touching on ways to benefit from the incentives offered by the Kingdom’s economy, its strategic location, qualified human resources and the free trade deals it has signed with several countries, making it a gateway into regional and global markets.

The meetings also tackled the Jordan Economic Growth Plan 2018-2022 and the policies, government projects, and investments it encompasses in partnership with the private sector, with the aim of restoring momentum to economic growth and utilising the Kingdom’s vast potential for comprehensive development.

The King met with the senior executives and representatives of Udacity, a for-profit educational organisation that offers massive open online courses; the Walt Disney Company, GoPro Inc., which specialises in producing action cameras and developing its own mobile apps, Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google; Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, Greylock Partners venture capital firm, Union Square Ventures and Zynga, a video game development company.

The Sun Valley forum, held annually since 1983, features the participation of leading politicians and businesspeople from the US and the world, who discuss current political and economic developments and challenges.