Saudi Arabia
Oil-Related Transfers of Wealth
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Oil-related wealth transfers have helped create growing sovereign wealth funds in many of the oil exporting nations, including countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Experts attribute this to the role of sovereign wealth funds on the global market.
Saudi Arabia Moves Agriculture Abroad
Monday, May 12th, 2008Saudi government moves agriculture abroad by investing in farming of staple commodities in Thailand, Brazil, India and other countries. This move represents a classic case of “absolute advantage” economy. At the current high energy prices it makes all sense for Saudis to get rid of heavily subsidized agriculture sector burdened by huge costs of desalinated [...]
Saudi Arabia: New Infrastructure Projects
Saturday, May 10th, 2008Growing oil revenues spur investments in Saudi infrastructure:
$3 billion aluminum project at Jazan Economic City developed by MMC Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. and Saudi Binladin Group
DHL Express will invest more than $27 mln in infrastructure developments to facilitate its regional expansion plans
A dockyard will be built at the Islamic Port in [...]
Saudi Arabia: The Sharp Rise in Inflation
Sunday, April 6th, 2008Inflation in Saudi Arabia is forecast to reach a record annual average of 6.5 per cent in 2008 because of an expected new wave of interest rate cuts and a surge in rents and food prices.
Historically the Saudi inflation rate has been quite low in the period 2000 - 2006, within a range of 1% [...]