The Asharqia Chamber is the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Saudi Arabia. It traditionally aims at integrating the private sector in the economy.
In Saudi Arabia it is the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI) that supervises both the individual Chambers of Commerce and the Saudi Council of Chambers. The MOCI also directly manages elections of the Boards of Directors, approves the budgets, follows the work of the Chambers and directs them to perform their duties in accordance with the lines dictated by the ministry council number 66.
On 1 September, 2012, the Asharqia Chamber announced the "resettlement strategy". The Chairman of the Chamber reported to Arab News that the main objective is to nationalise (i.e. render public) services related to the industrial sector and to make optimum use of the advantages offered by the petroleum, gas and other strategic sectors (e.g. water, electricity and desalination sectors).
By injecting at least US$28bn, the Chamber expects to create more than 1bn domestic jobs.
Furthermore, the nationalisation programme includes local content requirements, which are expected to rise from 20% to 55% for the private sector.