Saudi Arabia: Economic Outlook
Saudi Arabia’s economic outlook is positive on the backdrop of higher private sector growth and gains in productivity.
Abdulrahman Al-Zamil explains the economic outlook for Saudi Arabia.
“Everybody talks about how private sector contribution is around 52%, not in terms of income. If you compare it by GDP, oil represents 85% in Saudi Arabia. The productivity of the private sector has continued to increase but unfortunately for the statistics and unfortunately for the economy, oil prices have increased.”
“So whatever you do in the private sector, if you compare it to the price of $80 today, will be maybe around 70% oil and 30% private sector. But if oil jumped tomorrow to $150, then we might go down to 7%. So productivity is hard to compare by looking at the numbers. Today, the total productivity of all industrial and agricultural and other business, in other words the total sales of the private sector, in the local economy is gross 200 billion dollars. Our non-oil exports reached 60 billion dollars in 2013.”
“This is an average increase of 10 to 15%. This means we have 50% locally-supplied material for the market and 50% imported. I’m not talking about services or other activities like banking. What I’m saying is that the private sector in Saudi Arabia is extremely active and expanding in all sectors.”