A report issued by "KAMCO Invest" showed that the "Covid-19" epidemic had profound effects on the banking sector in the GCC countries, which led to record allocations for the fiscal year 2020. The report showed that allocations for losses of loans to listed banks in the GCC countries reached $20.3 billion during 2020. The UAE banks witnessed the largest increase in loss provisions, with an increase of $3.4 billion, or 72 percent, to reach $8.2 billion. The Saudi banks recorded the lowest percentage of increase in losses, which amounted to 37.6 percent, or 1.3 billion dollars, to reach 4.6 billion dollars during 2020. On the other hand, the net foreign direct investment in Saudi Arabia jumped by 20.2 percent, to about 5.5 billion dollars during 2020, compared to about $4.6 billion in the previous year.
In parallel, the government employment in Kuwait grew by 11.4 percent, and the number of employees in ministries and government departments reached 334 thousand people by the end of June 2020, 77.5 percent of them are Kuwaitis. The largest percentage of non-Kuwaiti workers in the public sector came from non-Gulf Arab countries (42.6 percent), followed by Asian countries (38.7 percent), and Gulf Cooperation Council countries (7.4 percent).
Source (Economic Bulletin Website, Edited)
