Regional News

  Bloomberg Kuwait Investment Authority is planning to manage more of its own assets as the world’s fifth-largest sovereign wealth fund seeks to take more risk to boost returns. The KIA, as the fund is known, wants to increase the allocation of funds managed in-house to as much as 8 percent from 1 or 2 percent at present, Managing Director ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s growth this year will be “significantly higher” than the International Monetary Fund’s new forecast, according to Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan. Economic expansion will be “north of 1 percent,” Al-Jadaan said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The IMF lowered its forecast to 0.4 percent from 2 percent in its World Economic ...

  Bloomberg Jordan’s tourism sector has proved resilient with revenues stable at $4 billion in 2016 year against the previous year despite several militant attacks, the tourism minister said on Monday. Jordan hosted last year 3.8 million foreign visitors who spent in the country at least one night, a rise of 2.6 percent from the previous year, Lina Annab told ...

  Bloomberg In an economic crisis that has led to a shortage of medicines, Egyptians are skipping trips to drug stores and instead turning to herbal remedies to treat every-day illnesses. In the Cairo working class neighbourhood of Basateen, dozens can be seen lining up outside a decades-old herbal spice shop with pyramid-shaped stacks of jars on display, filled with ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s Almarai, the Gulf’s largest dairy company, reported a 1 percent increase in fourth-quarter net profit on Sunday, broadly in line with analysts’ forecasts, and said cost controls would continue to be a priority. Almarai said net profit totalled 488.5 million riyals ($130 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, up from 483.7 million riyals in ...

  Reuters OPEC’s Secretary-General has confidence in the commitment of oil producers who agreed to an output cut deal last month to ease a global glut that has depressed crude prices and hurt exporting countries’ revenues. Under the accord, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia and other non-members of the producer group will curtail oil output by ...

    Bloomberg The future of internet in Israel may depend on allowing a reorganization of Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Corp., despite concerns the move could undermine years of efforts to make the local market more competitive. “If we don’t move ahead with a national fiber-optic infrastructure, Israel’s internet will get stuck in another two or three years,” Regional Cooperation Minister ...

  Reuters Resources for the state fund intended to cover Algeria’s budget deficits had declined by 59.5 percent at the end of 2016 from the previous year because of falling oil prices, Finance Minister Hadji Baba Ammi said. State finances were already under pressure in Algeria, where the government had forecast foreign exchange reserves would reach $114 billion by the ...

  Bloomberg Egypt’s urban consumer prices rose the fastest in at least six years in December, fueled in part by a 28.3 percent increase in food costs following the central bank’s decision to abandon currency controls two months ago. Annual urban inflation accelerated to 23.3 percent in December, while the monthly rate quickened to 3.1 percent, according to the state-run ...

  Reuters A special Saudi Arabia committee has found a number of individuals guilty of providing insider information and insider trading in shares of telecoms operator Mobily, leaving them facing potential jail terms of between one and two years, the kingdom’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) said. The findings of Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Resolution of Securities Disputes (CRSD) are ...