Tim Callen, ex-IMF Mission Chief to Saudi Arabia and Visiting Fellow at AGSIW, joins The 966 to discuss Saudi Arabia’s budget, government spending, and more. Tim’s most recent piece for AGSIW discusses how increased spending in Saudi Arabia raises risks to the Saudi budget. The hosts take advantage of Tim’s extensive experience and vast knowledge on how Saudi Arabia’s budgeting and fiscal policy works. At the IMF, he was responsible for engagement with the government of Saudi Arabia and for the institution’s research and publications on the country. He also led the IMF’s research program on the GCC region. From 2021-22, he served as special advisor to the executive director for Saudi Arabia at the IMF’s Executive Board. Callen’s research interests focus on oil exporting countries and include prospects and policies for economic diversification away from oil, frameworks and institutions to limit procyclical fiscal policy, and appropriate exchange rate policies.
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Before the discussion, the hosts discuss Richard’s One Big Thing, a follow up to a recent episode The 966 did with experts Mansour El-Zahab and Zeynep Kösereisoğlu from Frontierview on the Regional HQ program, commonly referred to as the “#RHQ” program. The RHQ program is the requirement that companies seeking to contract with the Saudi government or its affiliates must have their regional headquarters within Saudi Arabia and not in any neighboring nations. Foreign companies are scrambling to meet a Saudi deadline to locate their regional headquarters in the kingdom by January or risk losing hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts in Saudi Arabia if their regional headquarters are based elsewhere.
The hosts conclude as always with Yallah! 6 top storylines to get you up to speed heading into the weekend.
–Saudi Arabia has postponed the fifth Arab-African summit that was scheduled for Friday and will, instead, host emergency Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Co-operation summits on Friday and Saturday to discuss Israel’s war on Gaza.
-International investors no longer have to visit a Saudi embassy to get a visa to travel to the Kingdom after the process for applying for the permit was moved online. The government have introduced the second phase of the “Investor Visitor” e-visa service, expanding its coverage from nearly 60 nations to include all countries worldwide, as reported by the Saudi Press Agency.
-The Red Sea International Film Festival (Red Sea IFF) has unveiled the line-up for its Competition and Arab Spectacular strands.
The festival will take place from November 30-December 9 in the port city of Jeddah under the theme ’Your Stories, Your Festival.’
-The Saudi Fund for Development will sign agreements worth 2 billion riyals ($533 million) with African countries, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said on Thursday during the Saudi-Arab-African Economic Conference in Riyadh.
