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RIYADH: A US economic delegation has held meetings with Syria’s sovereign fund to explore investment opportunities, as Damascus seeks to deepen ties with the world’s largest economy and attract international capital.
The meetings, which included representatives from government bodies and private companies, were focused on assessing the Syrian market and available investment opportunities amid the country’s economic opening and the lifting of sanctions, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
The discussions come as the Middle Eastern nation’s seeks to capitalize on the momentum generated following Washington’s termination of sanctions against Syria in July 2025.
“In his remarks during the meeting, Yasir Kahf, Director of Development and Planning at the Syrian Sovereign Fund, explained that the fund’s investment portfolio encompasses a diverse range of sectors and companies. He emphasized the Fund’s openness to establishing various forms of partnerships with US and international companies — including joint ventures — tailored to the specific nature of each sector,” the newly released SANA statement said.
Kahf also said the US Chamber of Commerce delegation’s inaugural visit to Syria represents a significant step toward enhancing economic cooperation.
Mohammad Mastat, director of public relations at the Syrian Sovereign Fund, said US companies had shown interest in entering the Syrian investment market, adding that several agreements and projects were currently under negotiation and would be announced in due course.
The easing of US sanctions has also created greater scope for investment and private-sector activity.
In May 2025, the US Treasury said sanctions relief would enable new investment in Syria and facilitate activity across all sectors of the Syrian economy as part of efforts to support its economic recovery.
The International Monetary Fund expects Syria’s economic growth to reach double digits in 2026 and remain strong in 2027.
It said the recovery is being supported by improving agriculture, hydrocarbon production, electricity provision, trade and services, alongside policies aimed at restoring macroeconomic stability and achieving a strong, private-sector-led recovery.
RIYADH: Madinah region has strong potential to turn date palm waste into value-added products, leveraging its competitive advantage in the palm and date sector to create investment opportunities in the circular economy.
According to Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah Chamber’s economic bulletin, the region has about 26,000 farms and approximately 8.1 million date palms, representing nearly 21 percent of Saudi Arabia’s total.
Each palm generates between 20 and 23 kg of waste annually, bringing the region’s estimated annual total to between 162,000 and 186,000 tonnes, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Products made from date palm waste include wood and composite boards, organic fertilizer, biochar, charcoal briquettes, biofuel pellets, natural fibers, insulation materials, date seed oil, wooden products and handicrafts.
These industries could create new production chains, from waste collection, sorting and processing to manufacturing and marketing. This would open investment opportunities, diversify the palm sector’s products and improve resource-use efficiency.
RIYADH: Hail Municipality has unveiled five new investment opportunities for investors, aiming to boost investment prospects in the region, develop commercial, agricultural and recreational activities, and make use of municipal sites in ways that support economic development and improve the urban landscape.
The investment opportunities include the establishment, operation and maintenance of a mixed-use site in the Al-Nuqrah district covering 5,129 sq. meters, with a contract term of up to 20 years, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
They also include an agricultural nursery site in the Al-Rawabi Al-Awwal district covering 9,999 sq. meters, with a contract term of up to 10 years, and a second nursery site covering 16,828 sq. meters, with a term of up to five years.
The opportunities also include the establishment, operation and maintenance of a commercial complex in the Hittin district covering 6,297 sq. meters, with a contract term of up to 20 years, and the establishment, operation and maintenance of a mixed-use site on Jubbah Road covering 20,326 sq. meters, with a contract term of up to 20 years — offering investors diverse opportunities in commercial, agricultural, recreational and tourism activities, and supporting the development and investment of municipal sites in the region.
The Hail Municipality said the opportunities build on its efforts to empower the private sector, encourage investment, and develop commercial, agricultural, recreational and tourism activities, in line with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 to strengthen partnership with the private sector, support sustainable development and improve quality of life. It invited the public to view details of the opportunities through the municipality’s investment platform.
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Helsinki has landed the biggest cheque Google has written anywhere in Europe
The company announced on Wednesday that a €13 billion investment will fund data centres and supporting infrastructure across four municipalities, along with clean energy projects and funds dedicated to local biodiversity, education, research and workforce development.
The facilities in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala will power a range of Google services, among them its Gemini chatbot. The company described the decision as “a testament to Finland’s leadership in responsibly building AI infrastructure.”
Construction is expected across 2027 and 2028, and the firm estimates the investment will add €3.6 billion a year to Finland’s GDP while supporting more than 37,000 jobs, roughly 16,000 of them in construction.
Once the building stops, Google projects the sites will sustain around 7,000 jobs annually, spanning technical and facility roles, equipment suppliers, as well as the shops, restaurants and services used by those workers and their families.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo welcomed the announcement in Google’s statement.
“Google’s decision is a clear testament to our strengths. The value of the data economy extends far beyond direct investment into spurring innovation, research and development,” Orpo said, adding that closer collaboration would “deliver lasting benefits for both parties.”
The appeal to invest in Finland is rooted in its cold climate.
Data centres generate enormous heat and consume vast quantities of electricity, and Finland offers a cold climate that reduces cooling costs alongside relatively cheap and stable power from nuclear plants, wind and hydro.
That combination has produced a boom, with dozens of data centres already under construction across the country.
Google’s own presence dates back to 2009, when it bought a disused paper mill in the coastal city of Hamina and converted it, expanding steadily since.
For Orpo’s right-wing government, attracting this kind of investment has also been a priority, especially since Finnish elections will take place in April of next year.
Finland is contending with record unemployment and weak growth, and the data economy has become one of the few sectors offering the prospect of substantial investment and job creation.
Additional sources • AFP
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Three MEPs have agreed in a report to be published Wednesday to tighten the requirements for foreign direct investment in the EU, restricting access to the European market for Chinese investors, Euronews has learned.
The report comes from the European Parliament’s rapporteurs on the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, MEPs Christophe Grudler (Renew), Pierre Jouvet (S&D) and MEP Anna Cavazzini (The Greens). The act was presented by the European Commission last March and creates a European preference on the EU market to favour products made in Europe, in a move to protect strategic sectors of EU industry from foreign competition.
However, China has threatened several times to retaliate against the legislation, which is still under discussion, putting access to the EU market at the top of the agenda in some ongoing trade negotiations with Brussels.
The exclusive details of the report obtained by Euronews show that in sectors where China is dominant, among them electric vehicles, solar panels, critical raw materials and batteries, the three rapporteurs want to impose strict requirements on investments exceeding €50 million, a threshold lower than the €100 million initially proposed by the Commission.
For such investments, any investor from a country holding 40% of the sector’s global market share will have to meet six conditions: own no more than 49% of the share capital of the EU target; make the investment through a joint venture with an EU entity; transfer technologies to Europeans; ensure that at least 60% of the workforce consists of EU workers; reinvest at least 1% of annual revenue into research and development within the EU; and source at least 30% of manufacturing inputs from within the bloc.
The rapporteurs have added to the Commission’s proposal investments in other sectors such as wind power, electrolysers and heat pumps, making it necessary for the investor to meet at least three of the conditions above.
The report also restricts access to public procurement and public support schemes to products made in the 27 EU member states across areas such as clean technologies, cars and energy-intensive industries.
The Commission will only be allowed to extend the scope to products coming from non-EU countries under strict conditions, such as the application of reciprocal access for Europeans to foreign countries’ public procurement.
This follows intense lobbying from EU foreign partners, which want their products to be recognised as “made in Europe” to access the EU market. Many, such as the United Kingdom, argued that EU value chains were too intertwined with their own market to exclude them.
The report by the three MEPs will now have to be adopted by EU lawmakers before discussions start with EU member states on this future legislation.
However, it sends a signal to China that Europeans will not give up in their attempt to protect the EU market from China’s aggressive industrial policy.
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Europe’s answer to OpenAI has just become considerably better funded.
The Paris-based company Mistral AI announced its Series D on Tuesday, three years after being seeded, with the memory chip giant Samsung leading alongside the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity.
The step up is steep.
Mistral was valued at €11.7 billion in 2025 after a €1.7 billion Series C led by Dutch chipmaker ASML, meaning the company has almost doubled its valuation in a year.
Much of the money is going into concrete rather than code. CEO Arthur Mensch announced the funding would build out data centres and computing capacity that Mistral can rent to others but that will also ensure autonomy.
“Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow around 100% in the next five years,” Mensch said, adding that the company would train “bigger and faster models.”
Mistral is already spending €4 billion on data centres across France and Europe, with one facility running outside Paris and another under construction in Sweden.
It raised further debt financing in March for the same purpose, and Microsoft has agreed to fund capacity from its European network, built around thousands of Nvidia chips.
Both Microsoft and Nvidia are also investors in Mistral, with the latter also adding exposure in this funding round.
The company says more than 125 enterprises across 20 countries use its technology, and Mistral projects it will pass a billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.
Despite the news, Europe continues to critically lag behind in the global AI race.
Mistral’s valuation sits far below OpenAI and Anthropic, and Europe’s wider AI sector remains a fraction of the American one, with enterprise adoption across the bloc running at around 13.5%.
Other European contenders exist but are smaller.
Germany’s Aleph Alpha focuses on government and regulated industries rather than competing at the frontier, while Helsing has grown quickly in defence applications, and Switzerland’s Apertus offers fully open models and training data.
Brussels is trying to close the gap.
The InvestAI initiative carries a €200 billion headline commitment, and in July the Commission opened tenders for up to seven AI gigafactories, aiming to unlock more than €30 billion in investment, though those sites are not expected to operate until next year or 2028.
Thirteen smaller AI factories are already being built across seven EU countries.
The AI Act became applicable in August, but its toughest obligations were pushed back by the digital omnibus agreed in May, with high-risk rules now landing in December 2027 and August 2028, a delay Brussels framed as making the policy more innovation-friendly.
Northampton chairman Kelvin Thomas said: “This has been a detailed and rigorous process, involving significant scrutiny of the proposed investment, the ownership structure, financial sustainability, and the suitability and financial standing of those involved.
“The successful completion of both the IFR and EFL processes represents an important milestone for the club and should provide supporters and stakeholders with further confidence in the proposed investment and the foundations being put in place for the club’s future.
“We would like to thank both the EFL and the IFR for their professionalism, diligence and thoroughness throughout their respective processes.
“As supporters will see from their varied backgrounds, there is a genuine passion for football within the group. A number of the investors have already visited Northampton, spent time at the club and attended matches.
“They will bring a strong blend of football, corporate and financial expertise to the club and with significant Brazilian representation within the group we also hope they might bring a little Brazilian excitement and flair with them.
“Now the regulatory processes have been completed we move towards completing the remaining documentation and finalising the investment. Full details regarding the investment, structure and the principal investors involved will be announced upon completion.
“We thank the fans for their patience, but it is reassuring that these in-depth processes are in place for football.”
The drone strike that hit a gasoline tank at the Zawiya refinery in August was more than a security incident. Zawiya is Libya’s largest operating refining facility, and the National Oil Corporation warned that continued attacks could force operations to halt. In an economy still built almost entirely around hydrocarbons, a disruption at one major facility rarely stays local. It becomes a national economic risk.
Libya’s dependence on oil has generated enormous wealth, but it has also concentrated economic risk in a relatively narrow network of fields, pipelines, export terminals, and refineries. A disruption at any one of these nodes can threaten fuel supplies, production, and the state revenue that depends on them, reaching well beyond the site itself.
None of this means Libya should move away from oil, which will remain central to the economy for years. The more useful question is whether Libya can build enough productive capacity around it that the country’s economic future isn’t defined by the vulnerability of a handful of facilities. Diversification is often discussed in the abstract. In Libya, it is starting to take a more concrete shape, particularly in cement and steel, where investment is beginning to build an economic base around production, employment, infrastructure, and domestic value rather than around extraction alone.
Why cement is more than a construction material
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Cement doesn’t carry the same strategic weight as oil in most conversations about Libya’s economy, but for a country rebuilding its cities and infrastructure, it arguably should. Housing, roads, and public infrastructure all depend on a steady domestic supply of building materials, and meeting that demand locally generates a different kind of value than exporting raw resources: factories, supply chains, jobs at multiple skill levels, and more of the value construction generates staying inside the national economy.
There is also an export dimension. Libya’s location and access to regional markets give a competitive cement industry real potential beyond its own borders. Suhail Abushiha, Libya’s Minister of Economy and Trade, has said the country could eventually export as much as 25 million tonnes of cement annually, a figure that indicates how far this ambition is meant to reach, even if it remains some distance from current output.
A functioning industrial sector depends on engineers, technicians, suppliers, contractors, energy, transport, finance, logistics, and maintenance, and its output in turn supports other industries and the wider construction economy. That is the multiplier effect Libya needs, not just revenue, as oil provides, but economic activity that spreads across businesses, regions, and communities. The foundations for that are already forming.
The industrial base already in place
Libya is not starting from scratch. The Libyan Cement Company in Benghazi remains one of the country’s most established industrial producers, accounting for roughly 20 percent of national cement output and supporting more than 1,000 direct jobs. Over the years, its cement has supplied major infrastructure and reconstruction projects, and its history tracks the broader shift in Libya’s private sector. In 2023 it came under the ownership of businessman Ahmed Gadalla and has since grown to become a defining industrial player in eastern Libya.
The company’s importance extends past what it produces. A major industrial operation generates demand for engineers, contractors, transportation, logistics, maintenance, and energy services, and its output feeds directly into the construction and infrastructure projects that will shape Libya’s future. Gadalla’s industrial interests go beyond cement, in fact. His involvement in the SULB steel venture, alongside Tosyalı Holding, follows the same logic of building productive capacity in sectors that support construction and long-term development.
Alongside these established players, Libya is seeing a new wave of large-scale investment. In Nalut, ALHEDAB Cement Company is developing a major project with an estimated investment of $600 million, designed to produce up to 12,000 tonnes of cement per day, one of the largest industrial projects currently under development in the country. What distinguishes the project isn’t only its scale. Around 25 percent of its capital is expected to open to public and foreign investors, with plans for a future stock market listing, which points to a shift in how large industrial projects in Libya could be financed going forward: less reliant on the state or a narrow group of private interests, and more open to broader participation.
Other producers are expanding the sector as well. Arabian Cement Company, a domestically owned producer based in Khoms, has an annual production capacity of roughly 3.3 million tonnes, and international companies including Pakistan’s Lucky Cement and Oman’s Raysut Cement have identified opportunities in the Libyan market. What matters is less any single project than the combined effect: a growing network of producers, suppliers, contractors, logistics companies, and skilled workers starts to resemble an industrial ecosystem rather than a collection of unrelated ventures.
Diversification depends on projects reinforcing each other
Libya’s economic future won’t be transformed by one factory or one investment announcement. Diversification becomes meaningful when industries start reinforcing each other: cement supports construction, construction creates demand for steel, transport, and engineering services, and new industrial facilities need energy infrastructure, maintenance, logistics, and finance in turn. Industry’s value isn’t limited to what leaves the factory. It lives in the network of activity that builds up around it, which matters for Libya in particular, since oil has financed much of the state for decades without creating a broad productive base on its own. Cement and steel fit that gap reasonably well, given that reconstruction already creates substantial domestic demand and regional markets could add export opportunities over time.
Incentives alone won’t be enough
Projects at this scale need capital, confidence, and long-term commitment. Libya has been working to strengthen the investment environment through incentives and guarantees aimed at domestic and foreign investors. Investment promotion mechanisms backed by the Public Investment Bank are meant to build investor confidence, and the investment framework has tried to encourage the transfer of foreign expertise and technology, including requirements such as health insurance for workers.
These measures matter, but they aren’t sufficient on their own. Market opportunities, natural resources, and favorable terms can draw investors in, but long-term industrial investment depends on something more basic: confidence that regulators apply the rules consistently, and that assets, workers, and supply chains can operate somewhere secure. That is where the Zawiya attack becomes relevant again.
Security, not just incentives, will determine whether this works
The refinery attack points to a challenge that goes beyond any single facility: Libya’s economic prospects can’t be separated from its security and political environment. A country can offer investment guarantees, but uncertainty erodes their value. A manufacturer weighing a multi-million-dollar factory has to account for demand and profitability, but also electricity, logistics, regulation, security, and whether operations can run consistently for years at a time. That is why economic diversification and institutional reform need to move together. Libya needs investment, but investment needs predictability just as much: clear regulations, reliable institutions, and an environment where companies can plan past the next political or security disruption.
The Zawiya attacks make that need difficult to ignore. They show how quickly insecurity can threaten assets central to the national economy, and they strengthen the case for an economy that doesn’t depend on a narrow set of sources. Diversification can’t eliminate political or security risk, but it can reduce how much of the country’s economic life hinges on a limited number of facilities.
Where this leaves Libya
The Zawiya fire is a warning about what happens when a national economy leans too heavily on a narrow group of critical assets. Libya will remain an oil producer for the foreseeable future, and hydrocarbons will continue generating a large share of national wealth. But that doesn’t mean the country’s economic future has to be defined by oil alone.
New cement plants are under development, existing producers continue to back reconstruction and employment, capital is opening to domestic and foreign investors, and international companies are moving in alongside Libyan businesses. These are early signs of a possible shift, not evidence of one already completed. Whether Libya can turn individual investments into a coherent industrial strategy will depend on more than capital and ambition. It will depend on regulatory reform, stronger institutions, security, and sustained commitment to building productive capacity, with Libya’s oil wealth funding the broader transformation rather than substituting for it.