Saudi Arabia’s budget gap will shrink in 2019. Saudi Arabia plans to issue 118 billion riyals ($31.5 billion) in debt this year to help finance the national budget deficit, the country's Debt Management Office (DMO), part of the ministry of finance, said.
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00:00There's some good news coming in for Saudi Arabia.
00:03Saudi Arabia is planning to raise about $115 billion to plug its budget deficit for 2019.
00:12This is lower than expected and lower than what it was last year.
00:16Last year, the budget deficit was at about $150 billion.
00:20This decision comes days before Saudi Aramco is planning to come back to the dollar bond
00:25market to fund its acquisition of SABIC, that is Saudi Basic Industries.
00:30The United Arab Emirates grew slower than expected in 2018.
00:35The country grew at about 1.7% compared to last year, and is expecting a growth rate
00:41of about 2-3% in 2018.
00:45This disclosure comes days before Dubai said it grew by 1.9% in 2018, its slowest pace
00:53since 2009.
00:54Remember that UAE is an economy which is dependent on oil, and Abu Dhabi is the seventh
01:02biggest producer of oil in the world.
01:05That's it from me, and thanks for watching.
01:06For more, you can log on to gulfnews.com.