Saudi Arabia Is Already Spending The New Bond Money

The ink wasn’t even dry yet on the just concluded historic, upsized and dramatically oversubscribed bond sales by Saudi Arabia which raised $17.5 billion in three tranches, pricing more cheaply than many investors had expected and virtually on the same as the recent similar bond issue by higher-rated Qatar, and Saudi Arabia was already begun spending the money. Roughly at the same time as the wire transfers were taking place, the Saudis were busy repaying debts to state contractors, after long delays that squeezed company finances and hurt investor sentiment.

As London-based Capital Economics calculated, the total notional amount raised would finance around a third of next year’s state budget deficit and almost all of the kingdom’s current account gap, meaning its foreign exchange reserves were unlikely to fall much further in coming years.

And sure enough, the Kingdom did not waste any time in spending the new money.

According to Bloomberg, among the payments made are those to some major builders as well as companies outside the construction industry, both of which had been in arrears in some cases for months, and which in some prominent occasions such as the Binladin Group, involved the terminations of tens of thousands of workers. Some companies were told 30 to 40 percent of the outstanding dues will be paid before the end of the year, with the remainder to be settled in 2017, two people said.

As we reported at the time, Saudi Arabia had started delaying payments to contractors last year as it scrambled to negotiate a budget deficit that has reached about 15% of GDP as a result of the drop in oil prices. The austerity drive caused the non-oil economy to shrink in the last three months of 2015 and the first quarter this year. Today’s issuance of $17.5 billion in dollar bonds is precisely one way the country hopes to shore up its funds.

Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf, speaking in an interview with Saudi-owned network MBC, said payments “have been regularized and will rise in the coming period.” He didn’t give details. According to Bloomberg parts of the interview were leaked on social media. Saudi daily Okaz reported last month that the government had started to pay dues owed to Saudi Binladin Group, the kingdom’s biggest construction company, citing Abdullah Basodan, an adviser to company Chairman Bakr bin Mohammed Binladin.