ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq -The New Region has learned that Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud will be taking part in the 2024 World Economic Forum (WEF) next month.

This is the first time he will be attending in person.The forum, also known simply as Davos, takes place annually at the Swiss ski resort of Davos and will this year be held from January 15 to January 19. 

The Saudi delegation will be one of the largest in the world, the sources said. Prince Bin Salman, more widely known as MBS, said at his country’s flagship investment conference in October 2018 that,"The new Europe is the Middle East”. "The coming renaissance in the next 30 years will be in the Middle East,” he added at that time.

In 2021, the Saudi ruler addressed the World Economic Forum from a computer set up in the desert.

Later that year MBS met with the WEF president Borge Brende and discussed opportunities between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and WEF linked to the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, a program to end the kingdom's reliance on oil.
That meeting was attended by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Finance, Mohammed al-Jadaan, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Faisal al-Ibrahim, the Governor of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Yasser al-Rumayyan, and a number of officials in the forum.

“The 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum will focus on exploring the opportunities enabled by the new technologies and their implications on decision-making and global partnership,” a statement on the WEF website notes.

It added that the annual meeting would be “the foremost platform to drive public-private cooperation at the highest level, convening over 100 governments, all major international organizations, the 1000 most important global companies, relevant civil society and academic institutions, as well as the global media.