Saudi-Arabien Wirtschaftshandbuch Saudi Arabia Business ... - Ghorfa

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the bAnkInG And fInAncIAl Sector
Over the past three decades, the banking and financial
world in Saudi Arabia has undergone important changes.
Thanks to significant investments in the technological
equipment in the banks, all modern bank transactions
through to electronic banking can be guaranteed today.
The central bank of the Kingdom is the Saudi Arabian Monetary
Agency (SAMA) that was founded in 1952; this bank
issues the national currency (Saudi Riyal), whose course is
pegged at home and abroad, and also supervises the work of
the commercial banks and any other credit institutes operating
in the country. The SAMA also undertakes the government’s
financial transactions and those of the public sector.
Today, Saudi Arabia has an extensive state and private
banking system comprising its central bank, the commercial
banks and the state special and development banks.
The commercial bank field comprises ten national and/
or joint-venture banks (owned by nationals and foreign-
commercial banks – results 2003 (in billion Sr)
bank capital Assets credit deposits Profit
National Commercial Bank 10.33 117.43 49.75 90.45 3.01
Saudi American Bank 8.88 79.04 34.91 61.77 1.43
Riyadh Bank 8.55 71.51 27.95 45.88 1.59
Alrajhi Banking Corporation 7.25 64.68 k. A. 47.20 2.04
Saudi French Bank 5.05 53.50 26.72 42.63 1.19
Saudi British Bank 4.75 46.06 26.12 36.09 1.26
Arab National Bank 3.98 49.20 20.17 33.72 0.77
Saudi Hollandi Bank 2.55 27.96 13.9 6 21.58 0.60
Saudi Investment Bank 2.63 21.71 10.33 14.40 0.46
Al-Jazira Bank 0.88 8.99 4.66 7.54 0.09
k. A. = no information Source: 8 th development Plan, ministry of Planning, riyadh, 2005
WirTSchAfTSTrenDS – – economIc trendS
ers) and two branch offices of banks from neighbouring
Gulf countries. Furthermore, in November 2004 a new
commercial bank called the Albilad Bank started up. The
licence to operate from 2005 onwards was issued to six
subsidiaries of foreign banks.
The banks have created a tight network of branch offices
in the country. The number of bank branch offices rose to
1,353 by the end of 2007 (2000: 1,184 branch offices).
The introduction of modern ATM machine means that
the number of bank branch offices has not grown much
over the past few years. Despite the relatively tight network
of branch offices, the average number of branch offices
is 55 per 1 million persons which is still low compared
to the industrial countries such as Japan (303 branch offices),
USA (273 branch offices) and Great Britain (245
branch offices). The reason for this is that the use of cash
is widespread for personal or even commercial payments.
The amount of cash among the population is high. In the
future, the banks must try and convince the population
of the advantage of money transactions so that the banking
system can fulfil its function of mobilising financial
resources for developing the economy.
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