Saudi bank credit growth poised for slowdown

CONTINUING OPTIMISM: SAMA's Al-Jasser (r) is predicting strong growth for the kingdom's non-oil private sector. (Getty Images)

Credit growth in Saudi Arabia, which tripled in the last year, was likely to slow down, a top central banker said on Sunday, as private investors rethink borrowing plans during the global financial crisis.

Still, Saudi Arabia's non-oil private sector would grow in 2009, on par with this year, as the kingdom pushes ahead with major expansion plans, Muhammed Al-Jasser, vice governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said.

Credit growth of 37 percent in the first nine months of the year compared to just 12 or 13 percent in the prior-year period, he said.

"Thirty-seven percent is a very high rate that will probably slow down in the years to come," Al-Jasser told newswire Reuters in an interview. "The main reason is that this year was an extraordinary year of borrowing and spending by the private sector."

While growth of the oil sector could decline as OPEC slashes output, the non-oil private sector would expand 6 percent this year and "hover close to that" in 2009, Al-Jasser said.

The world's top oil exporter has been investing windfall revenues from six years of high oil prices into diversifying its economy. Oil prices have lost more than half their value since hitting a peak above $147 a barrel in July.

"We are receiving the winds flowing with contagion but we do not have the crisis that is swirling in Wall Street," Al-Jasser told a business forum in Dubai earlier on Sunday.

The central bank's 1.3 trillion riyals in ($346.7 billion) foreign reserves were in "very liquid, very safe, minimal risk" international assets, he said.

The global financial crisis has prompted Gulf Arab states, like the rest of the world, to enact a slew of policy measures to combat tight credit conditions and negative investor faith.

Saudi Arabia has cut interest rates, lowered bank reserve requirements, guaranteed bank deposits and poured billions into long-term deposits into the banking system.

The kingdom, the only Arab state that is a member of the G20, said in Washington on Saturday it would implement a $400 billion development and investment programme in the oil and government sectors over the next five years.

"Whatever is already budgeted for and committed for will continue," Al-Jasser said of the country's expansion projects. "I'm not expecting the private sector to pull out at all. This is an area where the demographics are the best they could have."

The central bank vice governor said on Sunday that Gulf Arab countries were working together to mitigate the effect of the crisis on the region, even if there were few public signs of such coordination.

States in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - most of which are preparing for monetary union - should take a greater role in re-modelling the global financial order, the vice governor added.

"I think the more participation in an international forum the better able we will be in preserving and protecting our interests and having our voice heard," Al-Jasser said.

For its part, Saudi Arabia rebuffed talk on Saturday that it would hand more cash to the International Monetary Fund, saying there needed to be equitable burden-sharing between all IMF member states.

"For the present crisis, Saudi Arabia has never shied away from its international role," Al-Jasser said. (Reuters)

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