Top marks for economic reforms as Vision 2030 boosts confidence

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) encouraging assessment underscores the Saudi government's commitment to fiscal discipline and comes two years after it warned of the Kingdom's fiscal ruin, a top economist told Arab News Sunday.
“It's encouraging that the IMF sees a lower fiscal deficit albeit low growth for 2016 and 2017,” said John Sfakianakis, director of economic research at the Gulf Research Center.
“Saudi Arabia has embarked on the largest economic reform project over the last decades which the IMF acknowledges undoubtedly given its depth and breadth for an oil dominant economy,” Sfakianakis said.
A senior Saudi economist added that the Kingdom’s economy is stabilizing after the government implemented pivotal reforms.
Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program (NTP) 2020 have made international financial institutions such as the IMF to change their views of the Kingdom’s economic progress, Said Al-Shaikh, chief economist at the National Commercial Bank, told Arab News. 
“Over the course of 2016, several initiatives have been introduced, such as establishing of an SME commission and a venture capital fund besides passing of several laws including commercial laws,” the economist added.
In a recent report, Al-Rajhi Capital Research said the IMF expects the Saudi economy to stabilize its GDP growth to 2.25 percent, implying steady improvement over the next couple of years (1.2 percent in 2016).
Speaking to Bloomberg recently, Tim Callen, the IMF’s Saudi mission chief, commented: “The fiscal adjustment is under way. The government is very serious in bringing about that fiscal adjustment.
Callen added: “We’re happy with the progress that’s being made.”
In a related development, economists said that second-quarter earnings in Saudi Arabia’s petrochemical industry beat expectations as producers reaped the benefits of volatile oil prices.

Source: Arab News