Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said that a multi-billion-dollar technology investment fund the kingdom is developing in partnership with Japan’s SoftBank showed its determination to diversify its economy, according to a report.

Speaking at KAPSARC Energy Dialogue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Khaled Al-Falih said that the proposed new fund “is simply one indication of this determination and the bold steps being taken” to reorient the economy of the world’s biggest oil exporter, reported The Peninsula.

Al-Falih told the forum that in the past the kingdom had not implemented diversification policies “as efficiently as we should have”.

SoftBank said it hoped to raise up to $100 billion for the fund designed to invest in promising technology firms.

Although Saudi Arabia wants to seize opportunities in a world that will be increasingly technology intensive, Falih said the kingdom would not reduce the contribution of its traditional pillars of oil and gas, petrochemicals and mining.

It will rather be “enhancing the development of other industrial and economic sectors to rebalance and accelerate the growth of the overall economy," he said.