The profits of the 5 largest Saudi banks exceed $ 5 billion

 Saudi stock market data revealed promising numbers recorded by the Saudi banking sector, in the first half of 2021, as the sector index, which tracks the performance of Saudi banks listed on the stock exchange, increased by 36.5% in the mentioned period.

This came according to what Forbes Middle East published on the occasion of the Saudi National Day, in which it stated that the total net profit of the 5 most powerful Saudi banks listed on the stock exchange in its list of the top 50 banks in the region more than doubled during the first half of 2021, compared to in the same period of the previous year.

Forbes indicated that these five banks are: Al-Rajhi Bank, Saudi National Bank, Riyad Bank, Saudi British Bank (SABB), and Banque Saudi Fransi.

Forbes Middle East accounts show that the profits of these banks exceeded $5 billion (18.8 billion Saudi riyals) in the first half of 2021, compared to about $2 billion in net income at the end of the same half of the previous year.

The total assets of these five banks also grew significantly in the first six months of 2021, jumping from $493 billion to nearly $600 billion.

Forbes attributes the reason for the banks’ success to the speed of the Saudi Central Bank’s move in dealing with the “Covid-19” pandemic, in March 2020, to reveal an unprecedented set of incentives that reduce the economic impact of the pandemic on borrowers, as the Central Bank launched a stimulus package worth 13.3 billion dollars ( 50 billion Saudi riyals) aimed at easing debt payments and strengthening the financial sector, and pumping another $ 13.3 billion into the banking sector in the form of deposits without profits for one year, in June of last year, and this allowed Saudi banks to overcome the repercussions of the pandemic.

It is noteworthy that the value of the assets of the five Saudi banks exceeded the value of the foreign reserves held by the Saudi Central Bank, as a report of the latter, published last August, showed that the Central Bank had foreign reserves of 429 billion dollars.