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No single story is dominating coverage of Saudi in the foreign press, but plans for the first Trump Tower in Saudi are still getting ink from AFP and The Independent.
Fiscal strains resulting from spending on gigaprojects pushed the Kingdom’s sovereign-risk score down during 1H 2024, Bloomberg reported. “Elevated spending on Vision 2030-related giga-projects reduces the scope for expenditure consolidation in the medium term,” Goldman Sachs economist Farouk Soussa wrote in a report. The report showed sovereign-risk scores for Saudi and Israel fall the most in emerging markets due to the Gaza war and fiscal pressures.
REMEMBER- Policymakers have accepted modest deficits as the price of continuing to invest in growth: Finance Minister Mohamed Al Jadaan signaled the government will continue to run deficits to support the “government’s strategic expansionary spending” even as it paced out some components of select gigaprojects.
Meanwhile, half of the drop in global seaborne oil flows in June were from Saudi, signaling officials were keeping some barrels at home to supply power plants as demand for air conditioning rises in the summer, Bloomberg reported. Global seaborne flows fell 1.08 mn barrels per day last month.
