According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts, the size of Saudi Arabia’s economy will exceed $1 trillion in 2022, for the first time in its history, Bloomberg Asharq reported on Wednesday.
The data of the Saudi General Authority for Statistics indicated that the Kingdom’s economy grew during the first quarter of 2022, with the highest quarterly growth rate since 2011. The growth rate during the first quarter of this year was 9.6 percent, it added.
During the first quarter, oil activity in Saudi Arabia increased by 20.4 percent and non-oil activity by 3.7 percent, according to the data.
Earlier in April, the IMF revised its economic forecast for Saudi Arabia, anticipating a 2.8 percent growth, “reflecting higher oil productions in line with the OPEC+ agreement, reinforced by strong-than-anticipated growth in the non-oil sector.”
“We raised our estimates of the growth rate of the Saudi economy by 2.8 percentage points, which reflects the increase in oil production in accordance with the OPEC+ agreement, in conjunction with the more non-oil output growth exceeding expectations,” according to the report.