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Saudi PIF Ranks 8th Among World’s Top SWFs With $390b Assets

Saudi PIF Ranks 8th Among World’s Top SWFs With $390b Assets
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Saudi PIF Ranks 8th Among World’s Top SWFs With $390b Assets

Saudi PIF Ranks 8th Among World’s Top SWFs With $390b Assets

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) maintained its 8th position among the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) for September 2020, recent data from SWF Institute showed.

The Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund assets increased by $30 billion to $390 billion, hovering near a targeted level of $400 billion by the end of 2020.

Elsewhere, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global maintained its top position in the list with assets standing at $1.108 trillion, declining by nearly $78 billion.

China Investment Corporation (CIC) came in second with $940.6 billion worth of assets.

It was followed by Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ($579.6 billion) and Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) with $533.7 billion worth of assets.

The combined assets of the 88 sovereign wealth funds hit $7.83 trillion.

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Israeli Cabinet Approves 2025 State Budget with Spending Cuts to Pay for Ongoing War

A usually crowded beach in Tel Aviv is nearly deserted on August 25, 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
A usually crowded beach in Tel Aviv is nearly deserted on August 25, 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
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Israeli Cabinet Approves 2025 State Budget with Spending Cuts to Pay for Ongoing War

A usually crowded beach in Tel Aviv is nearly deserted on August 25, 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
A usually crowded beach in Tel Aviv is nearly deserted on August 25, 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

The Israeli cabinet approved a long-delayed wartime budget package on Friday that includes a raft of tax increases and spending cuts to pay for a war that has entered its second year with no immediate end in sight.

Israel has had to boost military spending by billions of shekels to accommodate the cost of a war that has resulted in thousands of troops deployed in Gaza and Lebanon, while much of the economy has slowed drastically due to a lack of workers. This week, the finance ministry cut the 2024 growth outlook for the second time this year to just 0.4% from an earlier estimate of 1.1%.

The cost of fighting and the absence of tens of thousands of reservists serving at the front, along with the exclusion of thousands of Palestinian workers from Israel for security reasons, have weighed heavily on the main pillars of the economy including tech, construction and agriculture.

"The main goal in the 2025 budget is maintaining the security of the state and achieving victory on all fronts, while maintaining the resilience of the Israeli economy," Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement.

In all, the budget includes a roughly 40-billion-shekel package of tax hikes and spending cuts to try to rein in a budget deficit now running at 8.5% of GDP.

Overall spending was set at 744 billion shekels ($199.23 billion), of which 161 billion will go towards debt servicing.

All three of the main credit-rating agencies have cut their ratings on Israel this year on worries that the war could continue well into next year.

Among the measures likely to bite hardest on Israeli households, value-added tax will rise in 2025 to 18% from 17%. In addition, there will be spending cuts across most ministries.

The package will have to go to parliament for approval, which Smotrich said was expected by January. Failure to approve the budget by the end of March would trigger new elections.