Archive - Al Arabiya English

Deals worth $18 bln signed during Saudi Crown Prince visit to Paris

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

On the sidelines of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Saudi Arabia, 20 economic agreements were signed with the French side totaling $18 billion. The most important agreements were reached in the energy sector between Saudi Aramco and French petrochemiocal giant Total. The first deal is worth $7.2 billion to establish a new petrochemical complex in partnership with SATORP, and the second is a $3 billion trade agreement. In the aviation sector, an agreement was signed ...

Qatar withdraws $20 billion in foreign deposits to support its banks

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

The latest report on Qatar's bonds showed that Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) had brought $20 billion from abroad to support its local banks. These deposits are brought back to balance the repercussions of the quadrant boycott on domestic money flows and the liquidity crisis in the country's banks. Sources told Bloomberg News that $30 billion of non-resident deposits had left Doha after the boycott decision. This week, Qatari bankers are meeting with fixed-income investors to issue their first ...

Aramco CEO: Eight agreements worth $10 bln to be signed with French firms

Monday, 9 April 2018

Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said to Al Arabiya on Monday that Eight agreements worth $10 bln are to be signed tomorow with French firms. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the Saudi Aramco Research Center in Houston on Saturday, as the third week of his tour of the United States comes to an end. The Aramco visit focused on the Saudi oil giant’s research agenda in the US. The Crown Prince was briefed by Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih as he watched a presentation on ...

Iran’s rial hits new record-low on Trump fears

Sunday, 8 April 2018

Iran’s currency fell more than six percent against the dollar on Sunday, hitting another record-low, as fears of a US withdrawal from the nuclear deal continued to drive speculation. The rial reached 55,200 to the dollar at the close on the open market -- a drop of nearly a third in the past six months -- according to the Financial Informing Network, considered the most reliable for fluctuations in the free rate. “There is a clearly an increase of people buying dollars because they ...

Trump sees trade deal with ‘friend’ Xi

Sunday, 8 April 2018

US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he sees an end to the escalating trade dispute with China, after tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs and threats that rattled markets. “China will take down its trade barriers because it is the right thing to do,” Trump said in a tweet. “Taxes will become reciprocal & deal will be made on Intellectual Property. Great future for both countries!” He added that he and China’s President Xi Jinping “will always be friends, ...

Dubai splashes billions on mega projects ahead of Expo 2020

Sunday, 8 April 2018

Dubai is splashing tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure and hospitality projects related to the international trade fair Expo 2020, Dubai-based BNC Network said in a report published Sunday. The value of Expo-related projects underway hit $42.5 billion in March, according to the Construction Intelligence Report. It said that $17.4 billion were invested in infrastructure and transport projects, $13.2 billion on housing and $11 billion for hotels and theme parks. The projects include an ...

Cryptocurrency traders use old gold in drive to draw Islamic investors

Sunday, 8 April 2018

In Dubai’s decades-old Gold Souk, customers from around the world haggle over bangles and necklaces. Elsewhere in the emirate, the region’s top center for gold trade, bullion is playing a new role in financial engineering. A local start-up company founded last year, OneGram, is issuing a gold-backed cryptocurrency -- part of efforts to convince Muslims that investing in cryptocurrencies complies with their faith. The global surge of interest in bitcoin, ethereum and other ...

Southeast Asia confident of growth despite trade tenions: Asean

Friday, 6 April 2018

Southeast Asia will maintain robust economic growth despite rising tensions as tit-for-tat tariffs between the US and China stoke fears of a damaging trade war, regional finance ministers said Friday.“We sounded a warning about the risk of rising protectionism and the possibility of the trade disputes deteriorating,” Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat told reporters after a meeting of ASEAN finance chiefs.However detailed briefings by economists from the World Bank, ...

Trump trade war could shrink world output by 1.0%: ECB

Friday, 6 April 2018

World economic output could fall as much as one percent in a year if US President Donald Trump sparks a trade war with America’s partners, a top European Central Bank official said Friday. “According to ECB staff simulations, world trade in goods could fall by up to 3.0 percent already in the first year after the change in tariffs and world GDP by up to 1.0 percent,” central bank board member Benoit Coeure said in a speech in Cernobbio, Italy. ECB economists modelled a scenario ...

Britain’s sugar tax on soft drinks comes into effect

Friday, 6 April 2018

Britain’s sugar tax on soft drinks came into effect on Friday, a move that will lead to some higher prices as the country seeks to battle childhood obesity. The tax, announced in March 2016, has already cut sugar content in drinks by 45 million kg per year, Britain’s Treasury said, as over 50 percent of manufacturers have reformulated their products to be below the levy’s sugar threshold. “Our teenagers consume nearly a bathtub of sugary drinks ...