Foreign Exchange Reserves in Saudi Arabia decreased to 1701209 SAR Million in December from 1713605 SAR Million in November of 2020.
Link here, February 5, 2021:
Official figures and data have shown that Saudi Arabia’s debt [is now] 21 times larger in just six years, as the kingdom has lost more than half a trillion dollars since King Salman came to power at the beginning of 2015.
Over the past six years, Riyadh has borrowed over $238.2 billion from foreign sources and withdrawn $278.3 billion from the general reserve assets, according to figures based on Saudi government and Saudi Central Bank data.
The latest SAMA report showed that the kingdom's foreign exchange reserve assets decreased to 1.701trillion Saudi riyals ($453.66 billion) by the end of December 2020.
The report indicated that the kingdom's foreign exchange reserve assets had decreased by just over nine percent by the end of 2020 over the course of a year, a drop of 172.2 billion Saudi riyals ($45.92 billion) compared to 2019.
Saudi Arabia lost $50 billion of its foreign exchange reserves in March and April, of which $40 billion were transferred to the Public Investment Fund (the state's sovereign wealth fund) due to the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Reports published by SAMA indicate that total reserve assets amounted to $732 billion at the end of 2014, implying that the Saudi reserves have decreased by more than 38 percent between January 2015, when King Salman took power, and December 2020.
It is noteworthy that the net value of foreign assets of the Saudi Central Bank decreased by about $27 billion last March compared to the previous month.
This represents the fastest decline recorded in at least 20 years, indicating that the kingdom urgently needs to exploit its reserves to offset the economic damage resulting from the drop in oil prices and the severe slowdown in all non-oil economic sectors due to the pandemic.
With their rig count down by ~50% in this time last year, I wonder how much this has reduced their ability to pump more oil. Only way to stop depletion is to drill baby drill. Makes me thing that their voluntary oil production curtailments is more than just price support of oil now.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite correct. Unlike unconventional oil where frack spreads are as important (if not more important than) rig counts, conventional fields like those in Saudi Arabia are very dependent on rig counts.
DeleteThe big question is whether Saudi Arabia has to go off-shore for more production; that was an issue a couple of years ago. Off-shore is much more problematic for Saudi Arabia than on-shore.