The total reserve assets of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were $804.1 billion at the end of the first half of 2024, according to data released by the Statistical Centre for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf (GCC-Stat). This represents a 7.5% increase over the figures at the end of the previous year.
The proportion of these reserve assets to the total global reserve assets was 4.9%. The figures also showed that, behind China, the European Union, Japan, and Switzerland, the GCC nations came in fifth place regarding the quantity of their foreign reserve assets.
The Center’s research indicates that this surge is due to the rise in oil revenues and the price of financial assets on international markets. The GCC countries’ financial resources are primarily derived from Brent crude, which attained an average price of almost $84 per barrel in the first half of 2024.
According to GCC-Stat, the total assets of commercial banks operating in the GCC Countries at the end of the first half of 2024 were around $4.3 trillion. This represents an 8.4% rise over the total assets recorded at the end of 2023. Monetary gold, special drawing rights, IMF reserves, foreign exchange, and foreign deposits and securities investments are examples of foreign reserve assets. Foreign reserve assets are regarded as a gauge of a nation’s capacity to pay for imports, boost trust in the nation’s monetary policy, maintain the stability of the national currency exchange rate, and withstand general economic shocks, whether they be domestic or international.
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