Dubai engineering solutions giant ARJ Holding Ltd is investing €100 million in the Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel project, tunnel designer Peter Vesterbacka announced at a press conference on Monday.

Mr Vesterbacka, chief of FinEst Bay Area, the group behind the tunnel project, pointed out the total cost of the tunnel stands at €15 billion, with an investment period of 30 years; the tunnel itself has a projected life span of 120 years, he said.

Finest Bay Area Leader Vesterbacka said the total cost of the project is estimated at €15 billion. The investment period is 30 years and the tunnel should last 120 years.

Project already over two years old

The project has been underway for two and a half years already, Mr Vesterbacka said, and Finest Bay Area has invested between two and three million of its own and investors funds.

Of the remainder, a loan is earmarked for 70% of funding, plus equal volumes of investments of European and Asian origin.

Mr Vesterback also swatted back media claims that there were two different tunnel projects in existence. He said in fact that the project comprises two tunnels, one passenger and one freight.

Tickets already one sale

FinEst Bay Area and Mr Westerbacka envisage the tunnel project being completed in 2024. Confidence in the project is such that travel tickets are already available. A return ticket costs €100 at present (half of that for one-way travel), and an annual ticket, with guaranteed unlimited travel through the tunnel for a year, costs €1,000.

Travel time through the tunnel between the two capitals is estimated at 20 minutes.

By comparison, return tickets via the three main car ferry operators, Tallink, Viking Line and Eckerö, cost between €20 and €50 at short notice and without offers. The journey takes between two and three hours in normal conditions.

Now-defunct fast catamaran service Lindaline, when it ran, was closer to this price for a one-way ticket on a journey of around 45 minutes. It is not clear yet whether the company, which had gone into receivership earlier this year, will reopen in 2019 with new vessels, or what ticket prices are likely to be.

Former helicopter service Copterline, which had planned to reopen services between the two cities in recent years, having discontinued them after a fatal accident involving one of its aircraft in 2005, has yet to do so. Ticket prices when it did operate were considerably higher even than those quoted for the proposed tunnel, though the journey time was approximately the same.

Peter Vesterbacka is the former CEO of Finnish game developer Rovio. According his plan, the tunnel's route and its feeder tracks would have four stops, one of which in Tallinn, the second some 15 km from Helsinki, the third near the Aalto University campus in Otaniemi, and the fourth at Helsinki Airport.

Last Friday, Mr Vesterbacka filed a request for initiating the procedure for a national designated spatial plan for the tunnel with the finance ministry.

Helsinki and Tallinn lie approximately 86 km apart at their nearest points, and are separated by the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea. The gulf has an average depth of a little over 40 m and is over 100 m deep at its deepest points (not necessarily along the route between the two cities). The underlying bedrock is principally limestone.

Western tourists, a rarity in Saudi Arabia, visited this weekend under a new visa system, as one of the world’s most inaccessible countries tries to open up its society and diversify its economy away from oil.

Thousands of fans flocked to Riyadh’s historic Diriyah district for Formula E, a motor sports tournament using electric vehicles, and concerts including by David Guetta and Black Eyed Peas.

Most were Saudis still unaccustomed to such entertainment in their own country, where cinemas and public concerts were banned until changes by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the past two years.

Despite an international outcry over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi-led war in Yemen, some Westerners also seized the opportunity to visit a country that still largely restricts foreigners to resident workers and their dependents, business visitors, and Muslim pilgrims.

An American named Jason is spending a week here with his German wife, riding quad bikes in the desert and visiting heritage sites in Ushaiger, 200 km (120 miles) northwest of the capital.

“The race sounds interesting but to be honest it was a means to see the country. We’re happy to be here,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to come for many, many years... I’m so happy to be here and that they’re letting us be here.”

Aaron, a 40-year-old software engineer, travelled from New York for two days. He and a few dozen other adventure travellers seeking to visit every country in the world checked the desert kingdom off their list this weekend.

“Saudi Arabia’s always been an exotic place... and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to come here,” he said as circus performers entertained guests in between races.

Some 1,000 foreigners from 80 countries received the new “sharek” visa, which is linked to a specific entertainment event, the authorities said.

That is a fraction of what they eventually hope to attract.

“Hopefully we will learn from this and see what we need to do for the future, but I can tell you from now that there is a lot of demand...” said Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Faisal, vice chairman of the General Sports Authority.

TOURISM TARGETS

Whizzing electric racecars wound through the ruins of Diriyah, the capital of the first Saudi state built by the ruling Al Saud family three centuries ago.

The UNESCO world heritage site is undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation, celebrating a telling of national history that puts the dynasty and its clerical allies front and centre.

Plans to admit significant numbers of tourists from abroad have been discussed for years, only to be blocked by conservative opinion and bureaucracy.

Now the crown prince is seeking to develop new industries to wean the world’s top oil exporter off petro-dollars.

Tourism is high on the agenda, despite a shortage of infrastructure. Reforms aim to lift total spending - by locals and foreigners - to $46.6 billion in 2020 from $27.9 billion in 2015.

Such efforts have been overshadowed recently by the murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the crown prince, with the U.S. Senate blaming Prince Mohammed and insisting that Saudi Arabia hold accountable anyone responsible.

Saudi officials have denied Prince Mohammed ordered the hit, but their changing accounts and ties between him and some of the suspects have complicated Riyadh’s efforts to move on.

James, another American tourist, said the visit corrected some of his preconceived notions, but he bristled at the idea that visiting a country implied endorsing its government.

“Just forget the politics and you can relate to people all over the world,” he said. “That applies to Saudi Arabia, too.”

Source: Reuters

Kuwait has loosened its capital market rules, allowing foreign investors to own a bigger stake of its local banks, according to a press statement issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Saturday, another step in the Gulf state’s bid to encourage more overseas investment into the country.

Foreign ownership was previously not allowed to exceed more than 49 percent of a bank’s capital, but the new resolution removes this upper limit, according to a statement in Arabic issued by the ministry on Saturday.

It is not yet clear whether shares owned by foreign investors will be allowed to represent 100 percent of a bank’s capital, or how these rules will impact local investors. However, a report by the state news agency KUNA said investors will be required to gain approval from the Central Bank of Kuwait if the shares they want to buy represent more than 5 percent of a bank’s total capital.

The decision comes in accordance with Resolution No. 694 of 2018, which stipulates that "Article 3 of Ministerial Resolution No. 205 shall be replaced by a provision that allows the non-Kuwaiti investor to own and trade the shares of Kuwaiti banks".

The resolution affirmed that each person or group of people who are bound by a legal or economic connection either through joint ownership or mutual interests shall be considered as a single investor.

The decision to loosen the rules related to foreign ownership follows a recommendation by the Capital Markets Authority, which had recently been on a promotional tour of overseas markets to assess what concerns or challenges international investors face when investing in the Kuwaiti market.

The country’s capital markets are currently undergoing a series of reforms to make it more attractive to outside investors.

On April 1 this year, Kuwait divided its stock market into three segments as part of a reform programme aimed at improving the attractiveness of the exchange to investors.

In late June, global index compiler Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) announced that it will include the Kuwait index in its 2019 Annual Market Classification Review for a potential reclassification from frontier to emerging market status. Analysts foresee an increasing probability of Kuwait joining its peer GCC stock markets in Saudi, UAE and Qatar in gaining the upgrade

Last year, the governance board of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) Russell index compiler added Kuwait to its Secondary Emerging Market Index.

In Saudi Arabia, foreign investors will be allowed to own up to 49 percent of listed stocks on the local bourse. MSCI also decided it will reclassify Saudi Arabia as an emerging market from the middle of 2019

This year, the UAE announced allowing 100 percent foreign ownership in companies in a move to further encourage foreign investment in the country.

In a recent paper, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that financial systems in the Gulf region have developed significantly over the last couple of decades, but there is room for more progress.

“Financial systems have deepened and, overall, the level of financial development compares well with emerging markets. However, it still lags advanced economies and, other than for Saudi Arabia, appears to be lower than would be expected given economic fundamentals, such as income levels," the report noted.