24 Dec 2021; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's National Debt Management Centre (NDMC) said it has completed its 125 billion riyal ($33.3 billion) borrowing plan for 2021.
Saudi Finance Minister and Chairman of the NDMC, Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al-Jadaan, announced that 60.5 per cent of the debt raised in 2021 was from local sources while the remaining 39.5 per cent was made up of international borrowing.
Saudi Arabia resorted to domestic and foreign debt after its revenues were severely affected by the decline in oil revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Last August, the Saudi Ministry of Finance said the kingdom's public debt at the end of the second quarter of 2021 amounted to about 922.8 billion riyals ($246.1 billion), an increase of 2.4 per cent to the previous quarter, and 12.6 per cent on the previous year.
At the end of the second quarter of 2021, Saudi public debt made up 36.5 per cent of the kingdom's GDP, up from 32.3 per cent at the end of 2020.
