Saudi Arabia's foreign direct investment stock reached SR1,122.8 billion at the end of Q1 2026, up 12% year on year and representing about 32% of total foreign investment in the Kingdom, against total foreign investment of SR3,530.8 billion, up 18% year on year.
FDI growing 12% while total foreign investment grew 18% means portfolio and other investment are growing faster than direct investment, hot money is currently outpacing the patient kind.
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Saudi carries half of Gulf tourism
Saudi Arabia's travel and tourism sector contributed $178 billion to the economy in 2025, 46% of the entire Middle East's travel and tourism economy, growing 7.4%, nearly double the global rate of 4.1%, with international visitor spending up 8.2% against a 3.2% global rate.
Nearly half of the entire region's tourism economy now lies in Saudi Arabia, growing at twice the global rate, a shift large enough that the map of Middle Eastern travel needs to be redrawn before the guidebooks catch up.
$167 billion, and whose calendar it sits on
Kamco Invest puts Saudi bond and sukuk maturities for 2026–2030 at $167.4bn, the largest in the GCC, 64.5% of it dollar-denominated, with 73.5% of the corporate share held by banks and financial institutions.
When we opened Issue 01 with record credit of SR3.2tn, that was the top of the curve. The banks have their own maturities to meet now; price anything you plan to borrow for off the next two years of lending, not the last two.
Money market funds stay home
The Capital Market Authority decided to require managers of public money market funds to ensure that investments and assets held outside Saudi Arabia do not exceed 5% of a fund's net asset value. All overseas investments must also be with counterparties holding an investment-grade credit rating issued by a licensed credit rating agency, according to a CMA circular to capital market institutions.
Limiting foreign exposure to 5% of net asset value means money market funds are mainly used for domestic funding. This change affects where riyal liquidity is held more than it changes what savers earn.
