Saudi Arabia’s non-oil growth has picked up in July and August, recording a 2 per cent year-on-year growth, according to Bloomberg Intelligence Economics’ new monthly series of Saudi GDP.

Created by Ziad Daoud, Middle East Economist, the Bloomberg Monthly GDP for Saudi Arabia provides analysis on the kingdom’s GDP based on the latest oil and non-oil indicators. The model makes use of monetary and financial variables such as real ATM cash withdrawals, money supply growth, points of sales transactions and bank clearings of cheques.

The first analysis in the series has found that annual growth in all of these has increased in July and August, compared with the second quarter of this year. These are combined to mimic the movement in non-oil GDP as closely as possible, and show growth of about 2 per cent year-on-year in the non-oil sector.

If this growth persists at this rate until the end of the year, the non-oil sector will show an average expansion of 1.3 per cent in 2017, the report said.

However, this is not large enough to turn overall growth positive. The strain from the oil sector has deepened in July and August, according Opec statistics. The Bloomberg Monthly GDP indicator shows the kingdom’s economy contracted by about 0.8 per cent in July and August compared to last year.  – TradeArabia News Service