Saudi Arabia's Saudi Telecom Co. (STC), the Middle East’s most profitable mobile operator, "plans to spend about $1 billion to transform the kingdom into a regional data hub, and may sell a stake in its data hub, called Center3, business to finance the plans," Bloomberg reports.
Carriers in the Middle East are set to expand its fleet with an additional 2,980 commercial jets in the next two decades, spending upwards of $765 billion on new planes, major supplier Boeing said on Monday in Dubai.
In its latest monthly report, OPEC stuck to its forecasts for robust global oil demand growth in 2022 and 2023, citing signs that major economies were faring better than expected despite global headwinds such as surging inflation, Reuters reports.
Israeli companies Enlight Renewable Energy Ltd. and natural gas producer NewMed Energy LP plan to jointly develop renewable energy projects in North Africa and the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia and Oman, Bloomberg reports.
Saudi Arabia's economy is expected to cross the $1 trillion mark, joining the largest economies in the world as the Kingdom's GDP is expected to soar in 2022 on the back of high oil prices.
In episode 51, The 966 chats with our long-time friend and longtime economist and observer of the Kingdom, Dr. John Sfakianakis. John is the chief economist and head of research of the Gulf Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and is a professorial fellow at Cambridge.
Up to one million people, including 850,000 from abroad, are visiting Saudi Arabia for the Hajj Pilgrimage, in what is the largest gathering of pilgrims since the start of the pandemic curbed the ability for Saudi Arabia to host.
