Subdued oil prices deflated investor sentiment across the GCC throughout most of 2017. However, mid-2017 brought some encouraging developments: news of a possible MSCI reclassification resulted in a spike in the main index of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) in the summer of 2017. In 2016 the government launched the National Transformation...
On February 26, 2017 Saudi Arabia became the first country in the Gulf region to launch a parallel equity market – Nomu, named after the Arabic word for “growth”. The new exchange is expected to attract small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and support their growth. It could be a game-changer both for budding regional businesses and...
The year 2017 has seen a welcome recuperation in the liquidity position of the banking sector. In October 2017 the Saudi Arabia Interbank Offered Rate (SAIBOR) stood at 1.79%, a considerable improvement on the 2.39% that was reached in the same month of 2016. The interbank rate has been below 2% since February 2017, suggesting the liquidity...
Reaching a dispersed population across 2.15m sq km has always been a key challenge for Saudi Arabia’s commercial banks. While coastal business centres and the capital are well served by banking infrastructure, the connection between the public and the industry is patchier in other parts of the country. According to the World Bank’s most recent...
Unveiled in October 2017, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) Programme 2018-20 is a development roadmap that aims to position the PIF as one of the world’s top sovereign wealth funds. Key objectives of the plan are to increase assets under management from $230bn to $400bn by 2020 and $2trn by 2030, and achieve average investment returns of 4-5%...
In the third quarter of 2017, 13.76m people were registered as working in the Kingdom, according to the General Authority for Statistics, with Saudi citizens making up just over 3m of the total. Foreign nationals have accounted for the bulk of the workforce for decades, and can be found in all strata of the economy, from CEOs and white-collar...
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