Board of Directors of APICORP holds 4th meeting

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Abdullah Al-Zaid, representative of the government of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the meeting was attended by representatives of the governments of member states namely: The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Egypt.

The meeting was also attended by Mr. Ahmad Bin Hamad Al-Nuaimi, the Chief Executive and General Manager of APICORP.

At the end of the meeting, Mr. Al-Naimi stated that the Board of Direcrtors discussed reports related to the Corporation's finance and investment activities, in addition to the financial statements for the period from January to August 2008.

As disclosed by the financial statements, the Corporation's Net Income for the period rose by 14% over its level for same period of last year to reach $70.2m.

Mr. Al-Nuaimi went on to say that inspite of the turbulent conditions that the international financial markets are going through at the moment, APICORP continued its financing activities, where it participated with a number of international financial institutions such as BNP Paribas, Calyon and Lloyd Bank to name a few, in arranging project finance transactions to the amount of $2.7bn.

These facilities have been extended to a number of petroleum and petrochemical projects and industries in the Arab world, chief among them: a $2.5bn loan in favour of Naqilat Company in Qatar, which is owned by Qatar Gas Transport Company, in addition, a $150m transaction was also arranged for Bobyan petrochemical Company in Kuwait.

Mr. Al-Nuaimi added that APICORP has recently renewed its $50m financing facility with the Arab Trade Finance Programme (ATFP) for an extra one year period, where APICORP signed the original agreement with the Programme two years before, which ended on 24 July 2008.

At the end, the Chairman and members of the Board of Directors and the General Manager of APICORP expressed their thanks and gratitude to the Government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for the warm rceception and generous hospitality extended to them during their stay in Jeddah.