Economic updates
Our in-depth, independent reports cover the macroeconomic environment, the Saudi government’s annual budget, and Saudi Arabia’s monetary and financial developments, labor market, and inflation.
Saudi Economy: still shining
Macroeconomic reportDespite the prevailing global economic gloom, the Saudi economy continues on a solid growth path. We have revised some of our 2012 forecasts to take account of a recent flow of data that has generally been stronger than we had expected. Higher oil production despite a difficult global environment will keep the hydrocarbon sector growth elevated at 6.1 percent this year. As a result, we have also raised our projections for both the budget and current account surpluses. We maintain our baseline scenario which is centered on government spending leading non-oil growth to 5.7 percent this year. All in all, we now expect the Saudi economy to expand by 5.8 percent in 2012.
Seasonality and the Saudi stock market
All economies have seasonal trends, but for Saudi Arabia these trends are more pronounced than for most other global economies. In this report, we examine quarterly earnings for each of the 15 sectors of the market as well as quarterly real GDP growth rate to determine seasonal trends.
Mortgage Law
The endorsement by the Council of Ministers of the mortgage law is a very important step in broadening home ownership. It will help to tackle one of the most pressing social issues for many in the Kingdom and will generate significant benefits to the economy. However, it will take some time before the full benefits of the mortgage law are realized and the initial impact will probably not be substantial.