Moody’s Analytics expected Saudi Arabia’s non-oil GDP to grow between three and four percent annually until 2030, as the Kingdom is enhancing spending to diversify the economy away from oil.
Speaking at a webinar on the economic prospects for the Middle East and North Africa in 2024, Catarina Noro, an economist at Moody’s, said the Saudi economy has witnessed a transformation in the past decade, with the non-oil sector seizing a growing share of GDP growth.
She added: “We expect the non-oil economy to grow by between three and four percent annually until 2030, and in contrast, we expect the growth of the oil sector to be between 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent after 2025.”
Noro noted that the Kingdom’s continued provision of credit facilities to small and medium-sized companies was expected to stimulate growth in vital sectors, such as tourism and construction.
For his part, Sorin Vardanyan, an economic analyst at Moody’s, expected the price of Brent crude to range between $80 and $85 per barrel in 2024.
Meanwhile, Economic Analyst Dominik Bartos expected a new devaluation of the Egyptian pound as the government tends to gradually implement a flexible exchange rate system. The country is awaiting a postponed review by the International Monetary Fund to complete a financing program with a total value of $3 billion.
According to Bartos, Egypt’s economic problems resulted from long-standing structural challenges such as food insecurity, large population growth, and financial and external imbalances, which all increase the need for foreign financing.
Egypt had obtained the first tranche worth $350 million of a loan program from the IMF worth $3 billion over 46 months, and is awaiting a review of the Fund that has been postponed since March.
