Economy

The opening up of the GCC’s stock exchanges to foreign investment has been a salient feature of market commentary in recent years. The global economic crisis sent shockwaves through regional exchanges and, in the ensuing period of depressed trading, regulators around the Gulf embarked upon a market reform effort in a bid to attract scarce...

In the World Bank’s 2015 “Doing Business” rankings, Saudi Arabia placed 49th, second among GCC states (behind the UAE at 22nd) and ahead of other key emerging markets such as Turkey, China and Brazil. Despite having slipped five places since 2014, the Kingdom is still comparatively much stronger than other countries in the Middle East and...

Home to an estimated 15.7% of the world’s proven oil reserves and the single largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia is a key player not only in the region but also globally. Since the establishment of Saudi Arabia in September 1932, the Kingdom has poured its considerable resources into a series of large-scale...

The changing nature of Saudi exports tells the story of the Kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy. Encouragingly, non-oil exports have been growing more quickly than oil exports in recent years, though oil still makes up a significant majority of the country’s external sales, reflecting the size of the challenge facing the Kingdom with...

The transition to a new era of foreign participation in the Kingdom’s bourse, the Saudi Stock Exchange, also known as the Tadawul, has been a keenly anticipated event in the region’s financial markets. However, this is only the latest step in a longer process of market reform, where the exchange has evolved from a single-product market to an...