The Middle East

As the world’s nations and businesses become increasingly interconnected, so too does the flow of global migration. According to the OECD’s “International Migration Outlook 2018”, in 2017 some 258m people resided in a country other than the one they were born in and more than 5m foreign-born persons settled in OECD countries. The flow of...

Saudi Arabia’s budget for 2019 set a record-high expenditure level of SR1.11trn ($295.9bn), a rise of SR76bn ($20.3bn) over the previous year. The expansionary stance means the government is able to boost its current spending, which rose by 4% to SR860bn ($229.3bn), and thereby maintain its commitment to education, health care and social...

Global trade faces protectionist headwinds that are dampening the outlook for growth in the coming years. According to the World Trade Organisation, trade volumes grew by 4.7% in 2017 and are expected to have moderated slightly to 4.4% in 2018 and dip to 4% in 2019. Although this means growth will fall below the 4.8% average recorded since...

Firming oil prices have brought about an improvement in Saudi Arabia’s trade balance in 2018. The government’s longer-term ambition, however, is to protect itself from the uncertainty of the energy market by a diversifying the export base away from hydrocarbons. The Kingdom’s newly formulated economic strategy also aims to boost the level of...