International reserves and foreign currency liquidity at Qatar Central Bank increased in February by 2.14% year-on-year, to $ 56.3 billion.
According to Qatar Central Bank figures, official reserves recorded last month $ 40.9 billion, supported by the increase in investment in foreign treasury bonds to $ 22.6 billion, and the growth of gold possession to about $ 3.2 billion, against a decrease in the balances of foreign banks to $ 14.6 billion. Last month, liquid assets in foreign currency at Qatar Central Bank grew by 4.9 percent year on year to $ 15.3 billion.
On the other hand, Qatar's general budget deficit increased in the fourth quarter of last year by 45 percent year-on-year, to reach 7.1 billion riyals, according to data from the Qatari Ministry of Finance, which showed a total revenue of 39.4 billion riyals, i.e. a 20.2 percent decline from the quarter's revenues, the scenes from the previous year amounting to 49.4 billion riyals.
Public expenditures decreased in the last quarter of last year by 14.4 percent year-on-year to 46.5 billion riyals, compared to expenditures of 54.3 billion riyals in the corresponding quarter of 2019. On an annual basis, Qatar’s actual budget in 2020 recorded a deficit of 11.3 billion riyals against a surplus of 6.3 billion riyals in 2019, which represents 1.7 percent of the gross domestic product, this is under pressure from a 20.4 percent decline in revenues on an annual basis to 171 billion riyals, and a decrease in public expenditures by 12.5 percent to reach 182.4 billion riyals.
Source (CNBC Arabic website, Edited)
