Saudi saves $1bn a week as Egypt counts wheat stocks : HSBC

/saudi-saves-$1bn-a-week-as-egypt-counts

  • Prévisions économiques florissantes dans le Golfe déprimantes ailleurs (Bloomberg/ Gulf Times)

    Saudi economic output may expand 4.8% this year, according to an HSBC forecast that was raised from 4.3%. The kingdom may record a budget surplus equivalent to 6.4% of gross domestic product, compared with 7.1% in Qatar and 31% in Kuwait, HSBC estimates.

    Qatar’s economy may expand 6.5% this year, HSBC said, revising its estimate from 5.2% in the previous quarterly report.

    “Government spending remains the primary stimulus for this growth,” the economists wrote.

    Qatar plans to spend $140bn on infrastructure projects by 2019, three years before hosting the soccer World Cup finals, HE the Finance Minister Yousef Hussein Kamal had said last month.

    The growth forecast for Kuwait was raised to 4.4% from 3.9%.

    Egypt may post a budget deficit of about 11% of GDP, HSBC said, as the economy weakens amid rising opposition to President Mohamed Mursi, delays to loan talks with the International Monetary Fund, and plunging currency reserves. “For post-revolution Egypt, the brief window of opportunity for orderly political transition and economic stabilisation appears to have snapped shut, with substantial further deterioration since our last quarterly,” Williams and Martins wrote.

    The economy may grow 1.4% in the fiscal year ending in June, down from an earlier estimate of 2.1%, HSBC said. Egypt’s economy hasn’t expanded that slowly since the early 1990s, and it achieved average growth of 4.9% in the decade before Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011, according to the IMF.

    http://www.gulf-times.com/business/191/details/348588/saudi-saves-$1bn-a-week-as-egypt-counts-wheat-stocks%3A-hsbc