Saudi Arabia’s economy is forecast to grow faster this year following a significant improvement in the global oil market, according to a recently released report by Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment.
Jadwa Investment raised its forecasts for the Saudi Arabian economy’s growth in 2018 to 2.2%, compared with previous estimates for a growth rate of 1.5%. Jadwa expects Saudi production of crude oil to reach 10.3 million barrels per day this year, up from 10.1 million barrels per day in 2017.
“We expect Saudi crude oil output to average 10.3 million barrels per day (mbpd) over the course of the year, up from 10.1 mbpd previously. As oil outages continue from OPEC members such as Libya and Venezuela, and US sanctions begin to take effect on Iran, we expect Saudi Arabia to make up a large portion of the expected deficit in oil market balances in H2 2018,” Jadwa notes.
“On the non-oil side, we have maintained our forecast for non-oil GDP at 1.4 percent (compared to 1.0 percent in 2017). Within this forecast, we still expect to see non-oil private sector growth of 1.1 percent, compared to 0.7 percent in 2017.”
[Click here to read the full Macroeconomic Update Report from Jadwa Investment] [Arabic]
