Abraaj Capital Ltd., the Middle East’s biggest private-equity company, is in “advanced stages” of investing $20 million in small and medium-sized Egyptian companies and is also targeting investments in Saudi Arabia.

The firm will be “making two or potentially three investments” in Egypt soon in industries including “agribusiness and information technology,” Tom Speechley, a senior partner, said today in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Abraaj, based in Dubai, is also considering its first small and medium-enterprise “investment in Saudi Arabia, in the health-care and information-technology industry,” he said.

Speechley is chief executive officer of Abraaj’s Riyada Enterprise Development Fund, set up in 2009 to raise $500 million to buy stakes in more than 100 small and medium-sized companies in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Pakistan over the next four years.

Gulf Arab economies pump more than 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and have been spending tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure and industry to boost growth, creating opportunities for private-equity companies. Oil-exporting economies of the Middle East and North Africa will expand by an average 3.6 percent this year and by 5.1 percent in 2013, according to the International Monetary Fund.