Speaking in Bangkok this week, where the IMF and World Bank are holding their annual meetings, the fund's regional chief for the Middle East and Central Asia, Jihad Azour, set out why the kingdom has fared better than most of its neighbors. He said the kingdom had shown it could withstand shocks because reserves and earlier infrastructure spending allowed it to redirect oil exports within a very short time. That verdict has held through a tense October. Yemen's Houthi movement has fired missiles and drones at Saudi airports in recent weeks, yet the kingdom remains, in the fund's assessment, the Gulf economy best equipped to ride out the disruption.
Saudi Arabia has leaned on its East-West pipeline, which carries crude from the Gulf fields to ports on the Red Sea, a route that most neighbors lack. The IMF's July review of the Saudi economy had already noted that higher prices more than offset lost volumes, producing an oil revenue windfall.
The fund's outlook for the kingdom turns upward next year. It expects Saudi growth to resume in 2027, although Azour said the region as a whole would not have made up the ground lost to the war by 2030. He cautioned that a prolonged conflict could erode the buffers that have held so far, and urged Gulf states to deepen financial markets and link ports, roads and railways so that the next closure of the strait does less damage.