Insights

Saudi Economy: still shining

Despite 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.

Strong economic growth in the third quarter

The latest economic growth data released last week confirm that the healthy performance of the Saudi economy continued into the third quarter of 2012. In real terms (that is, adjusted for price movements) the economy was 5.87 percent larger in the third quarter of 2012 than in the same quarter of 2011. This strong performance was mainly driven by a solid growth in the non-oil government sector.

Rapid growth in the Kingdom’s foreign assets – April 2012

For the first time, data on the total foreign assets and liabilities of all components of the Saudi economy (government, companies and individuals) has been published. It shows that their combined foreign assets grew rapidly in recent years to stand at $707 billion at the end of 2010. This is very high and represents a core source of strength for the economy.

The Saudi Economy in 2012

We expect another year of reasonable performance in 2012. Non-oil growth will be strong and inflation should ease. Lower oil production will cause total real economic growth to slow, and combined with lower prices, will reduce the budget and current account surpluses.

R Market Research