Saudi Arabia’s central bank has stepped up the use of a mechanism to pump money into the financial system as it looks to tackle a liquidity crunch that has helped push borrowing costs for lenders to the highest in decades, Bloomberg News reported. The latest intervention is relying on open market operations, the people said, transactions that allow the central bank to provide or drain short-term liquidity in exchange for securities from lenders. Unusually for a period of high oil prices, Saudi banks are facing a shortage of liquidity.
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North Africa/Middle East
Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron on Tuesday warned lawmakers not to interfere with monetary policy decisions, and said the "magic solutions" they proposed to blunt the impact of interest rate hikes would hurt the weakest sectors of the economy, Reuters reported. Yaron's comments appeared to be a response to the head of the Israeli parliament's powerful finance committee, Moshe Gafni, who on Monday criticised a wave of central bank interest hikes and proposed legislation to shield mortgages from rate increases.
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The Bank of Israel is still in the process of front-loading interest rates and will likely raise rates to above 3.5%, Deputy Governor Andrew Abir said on Monday after a half-point rate increase to 2.75%, Reuters reported. Abir told Reuters that the central bank preferred "to err on the side of making sure we get inflation down" with its monetary policy. That means, he said, that the benchmark rate would likely go above the bank's own economists' forecast of 3.5%.
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Yemen’s internationally recognized government is on the verge of bankruptcy after Houthi attacks on oil facilities in southern Yemen halted all oil exports, and it may not be able to pay public employees in areas under its control in the near future, officials have warned, Yemenonline.com reported. A government source told Arab News public employees in liberated provinces might not receive their salaries in the coming months, adding that the country could experience severe fuel shortages and protracted power outages as a result of attacks forcing the government to stop importing fuel.
An Iranian pharmacist says many of the pharmacies in Iran are going bankrupt due to economic problems, Iran International reported. Mohammad Reza Afkhami, Secretary of the Khorasan Razavi Pharmacists Association, said pharmacies are not separate from other guilds and they are not in a good economic situation, either. “Currently, the economy of pharmacies is ruined, and they are on the verge of closing down. If the situation continues like this, we will see the closure of pharmacies soon,” warned Afkhami.
The International Monetary Fund reached a preliminary agreement with the Egyptian government Thursday that paves the way for the economically troubled Arab nation to access a $3 billion loan, officials said Thursday, the Associated Press reported. IMF officials said that a staff agreement between the Egyptian government and IMF leaders had been reached following months of talks, as Egypt struggles to combat surging inflation caused, in part, by the war in Ukraine.
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Egypt will develop a new currency indicator partly to wean people off the idea that the Egyptian pound should be pegged to the U.S. dollar, the new central bank governor said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Hassan Abdalla, appointed in August, told an economic conference that the central bank was also working to introduce currency hedging and had already finished futures contracts as it revamps its currency trading system. The indicator would be based on a basket of several currencies and possibly gold, he said.
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BitOasis, a Middle East-focused cryptocurrency exchange based in the United Arab Emirates, said on Tuesday it had signed an agreement with Mastercard to launch payment cards linked to cryptocurrencies, they said in a joint statement, Reuters reported. The cards will allow BitOasis customers in the Middle East and North Africa to make purchases at points of sale or online, "thereby adding consumer protection - such as provisions for dispute resolution and refunds - which doesn't exist today when paying with a digital asset," the companies said.
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The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) said on Monday it would reshape its ownership structure and also create a blockchain platform to allow more trading of crypto currencies in an effort to match international standards, Reuters reported. TASE, which went public in 2019, said it would create a new publicly traded holding company that will own 100% of the bourse, which will become a private firm. Subsidiaries of the exchange will be units of the new holding company. It said its board had given the nod to the plan but approval from the regulator and TASE shareholders were still awaited.
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Saudi Arabia's crown prince on Sunday launched an initiative to attract investments in supply chains to and from the kingdom, with an aim of raising an initial 40 billion riyals ($10.64 billion), Reuters reported. The initiative by Prince Mohammed bin Salman will include allocating about 10 billion riyals in incentives for supply chain investors, state news agency SPA reported, without elaborating.
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