Saudi economy benefitting from reforms: SAMA official

Saudi Arabia is benefiting from many strong reforms that have been adopted in the last three years as well as the improvement in oil prices, H.E. Dr Fahad Al Shathri, Deputy Governor – Supervision, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), said on Wednesday at a conference happening at Dubai.

Delivering his keynote speech at The Corporate Restructuring Summit 2018, he said, “While the overall real GDP declined in 2017 by 0.9 percent, driven mainly by the oil sector that declined by 3.1 percent from 2016 level, non-oil private sector, which gives more accurate picture of the economic activity, grew by 1.2 percent in 2017 compared to 0.1 in 2016.”

“It is expected that real GDP will continue to grow at healthy levels in 2018 as a result of better sentiments in the private sector and better economic conditions”, he added.

Underlining that banks constitute the core of the Saudi financial system with a total asset of approximately $595 billion and they are the key credit providers, he said, “The banking sector also enjoys a strong capital ratio of 21 percent, a sound Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) of 197 percent and a robust Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) of 125 percent, as at June 2018.”