Bank licenses are never easy to obtain in Saudi Arabia, especially for foreign banks. But the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) appear to have done just that, opening up a branch office in the country. Most likely ICBC will be offering simple cash management and treasury services to Chinese clients, much like the bank’s branch in Abu Dhabi.
But this article in Okaz (Arabic) suggests that the bank may also replace the middlemen that Saudi buyers use when importing from China. Not sure if I agree.
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In June, while in Riyadh, I heard stories that Indian goods were increasingly popular, at the expense of their Chinese competitors: apparently, the Indian goods were cheaper.
That makes sense given China’s rising labor costs and the fact that the Indian rupee has depreciated 29% against the Chinese renminbi over the past 2 years.
It also helps that Indian expatriates have opened their own retail chain stores across the Middle East: Home Plaza and E-Max Store are two commonly cited examples.
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Only a few years ago, Chinese construction companies were making large gains overseas. But their low-cost and labor-intensive business model is now running into some serious problems.
Let’s start with this article in the Saudi Gazette that reports how a number of Chinese companies have pulled out of the Saudi construction market, unable to meet demands for higher-quality buildings.
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Middle East tourist arrivals to Asia have been on the rise in recent year, and I’ve finally managed to aggregate the data from various national sources.
Here’s the results (and a few surprises).
The number of visitors to the region have surged since 2000, from around 600,000 to over 1.6 million visitors annually. The increases owes in part to the challenges of traveling to the West after 2001, and the surge in oil prices after 2004.
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It’s not recent news. But the fact the Chinese Embassy in Syria provided 10 walkie-talkies to the Arab League’s observer mission to Syria in early January is worth a mention.
The anecdote was quoted in a confidential report written by the mission’s head and acquired by a columnist for Foreign Policy, a respected magazine on global affairs. (That said, the report comes with a small health warning, as I can’t find independent confirmation of its contents).
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