Dr. Muhammad Al-Jasser, Minister of Economy and Planning, recently spoke to the Young Businessmen’s Committee of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Though the setting would appear innocuous, Dr. Al-Jasser’s remarks were not.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and the Middle East’s biggest economy, is about to complete a gradual process to open its stock market, known as the Tadawul or TASI, directly to international investors for the first time.
Saudi Arabia will mark the seventh anniversary of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s accession to the Saudi throne on May 17 with a variety of programs highlighting the remarkable progress achieved by the Kingdom.
Year-on-year inflation dipped to 5.3 percent in April from 5.4 percent
in March. Lower food price inflation was the main reason for the
decline. Rental inflation picked up.
The Saudi project market continues to thrive. Latest data from Meed put the value of projects “planned or underway” at $745 billion in mid-April, around 13 percent higher than a year earlier.
My purpose was to travel with my mother to Saudi Arabia to perform the Umrah, a mini version of the annual Hajj pilgrimage millions of Muslims make each year to Mecca. The historic city of Medina was the first stop on the journey before we continued on to Mecca for Umrah.
This is the region of newly proclaimed jihadi emirates in south Yemen that are run by affiliates of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni franchise of the movement founded by Osama bin Laden.
The industrial sector is the real excitement for us, which is growing at a rate of 15 percent, which is not a joke. The other one is service sector, like the financial services or the restaurant and hotels or other services in the economy.
