GulfBase Live Support
Leave a message and our representative will contact you soon
20/08/2017 05:39 AST
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) projects market had a muted performance in the first half of 2017, but it is expected to perform better in the second half of the year as the region’s economies continue to adjust to lower oil prices.
According to the latest data from MEED Projects, the region’s leading projects tracking and analysis service, just $56 billion worth of contracts were awarded in the first six months of 2017 compared with $69 billion worth of deals over the same period in 2016, a 19 percent fall.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, every country in the region experienced lower contract award values year-on-year, with the most marked falls seen in Kuwait (46 percent) and Bahrain (84 percent). Even Dubai, which has hitherto been the most robust and active of the GCC projects markets, experienced a slight dip between the two periods.
The prognosis for the second half of 2017 is brighter, however. Based on its tracker’s pipeline of projects under bidding in addition to contracts already awarded in July and August, MEED Projects forecasts a total of just $61 billion to be let in the second half of this year, a significant improvement on the first six months.
Added to the January-June numbers, the forecast for the year as a whole for the GCC is, therefore, $117 billion, roughly equivalent to the value of contracts awarded in 2016. On a country level, the UAE, led by the Dubai real estate and transport sectors, remains the largest single market with about $38 billion worth of contract awards. It is followed by Saudi Arabia at close to $36 billion and then Kuwait at $16.8 billion.
“Although market performance has been sluggish, there have been signs of a pick-up in activity,” said Ed James, director of Content and Analysis at MEED Projects. “The award of more than $5 billion worth of EPC contracts on the new Duqm refinery in Oman at the beginning of August, plus a raft of new project announcements in Dubai, and the gradual re-emergence of activity in Saudi Arabia have provided a degree of impetus that points to a strengthening market.
“There is no doubt that the past two years have been tough for the projects supply chain as government spending has slowed,” said James.
“Currently, there are over $2 trillion of known active projects in the pipeline across the GCC according to MEED Projects data. The majority of these are infrastructure schemes that are essential to the future prosperity of the region, job creation and economic diversification. While inevitably not all will come to fruition, we can be confident that there is still a large amount of work to come regardless of the oil price.”
Arab News
Ticker | Price | Volume |
---|---|---|
SABIC | 114.77 | 5,915,941 |
05/04/2018
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has signed an agreement with Six Flags to develop and design an amusement park in Riyadh. Six Flags, the world’s leading international amusement park compa
Arab News
05/04/2018
In an exclusive interview with Arab News, Turki Mohammed Al-Shehri explains how an expanding renewables industry will boost employment as well as pave the way for a greener future.
A massiv
Arab News
05/04/2018
Dubai’s residential property market continued to soften in the first three months of this year, in line with analysts’ forecasts, with rental values recording a more pronounced fall than sales prices
The National
05/04/2018
Buoyed by a strong oil price of $70 per barrel, Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul shot up by over 6 per cent in March 2018, according to Kuwait Financial Centre’s (Markaz’s) recently released Monthly Markets Re
Times of Oman
05/04/2018
Qatar banks’ combined credit facilities to real estate sector rose by QR17bn to QR147.7bn in 2017. The banks’ credit to various sectors stood at QR911bn at the end of 2017, up from QR839bn recorded i
The Peninsula