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The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) agreed a bilateral currency swap agreement with the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) on 28 September, allowing for the exchange of up to AED5bn and EGP42bn – equivalent in both cases to around $1.4bn – between the two institutions.

Oman Investment Authority (OIA) has set up the €100m ($106m) Spain Oman Private Equity Fund (Sopef) II with the Spanish government’s development finance institution Compañía Española de Financiación del Desarrollo (Cofides). The move extends a relationship which began with Sopef I launched in 2018 which is now almost fully invested and comes amid a number of recent international deals by the Omani fund.

Oman's State Audit Institution (SAI) director general Sharifa Bint Yahya Al-Mahrouqiyya said more than 30 civil servants had been found guilty of corruption and embezzlement last year. Speaking during a local television interview, she outlined details from her organisation’s annual report for 2022.

Dubai’s government plans to cut its debts by AED29bn ($7.9bn) this year, in a sign the emirate may be getting to grips with what has been a key economic vulnerability. In a statement, Dubai said it would pay off part of a AED20bn loan from the Central Bank of the UAE and Abu Dhabi government, which was provided after the 2008/09 financial crisis.

Global and regional powers have drawn up a series of plans to develop new trade corridors through Gulf countries over recent years, with the latest emerging at the G20 summit in India which will pass through the UAE, Saudi Arabia and on to Jordan and Israel. The ambitious plan could take decades to realise and will face competition from rival schemes backed by Iran, Iraq, Russia and Turkey. 

The Kuwaiti government has said it has 'updated' its economic reform strategy and pushed back the final date by five years to 2040, citing the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine war as reasons for the delay. 

Fitch Ratings upgraded Oman's long-term foreign-currency rating by one notch on 25 September, taking it from BB to BB+, with a stable outlook.

Grundberg diplomacy: United Nations special envoy Hans Grundberg has been meeting senior figures around the region, in an effort to inject new momentum into the peace process. He was in Riyadh on 9 August where he met Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) head Rashad Al-Alimi, Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik, foreign minister Ahmed Bin Mubarak and Saudi ambassador to Yemen Mohamed Al-Jaber. The following week, Grundberg was in Muscat for talks with Foreign Ministry undersecretary Khalifa Al-Harthy and Houthi chief negotiator Mohammed Abdel Salam.

With the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and other state-owned bodies driving many developments in the Saudi economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s annual Article IV consultation places the development of a Sovereign Asset-Liability Management (Salm) framework as "a high priority to support fiscal sustainability".  

Qatar’s ambassador to Australia Saad Abdulla Al-Mahmoud Al-Shareef and Qatar Airways executives are expected to be called to testify at an enquiry by the Australian Senate over a growing scandal around the Canberra government’s alleged protection of local flag carrier Qantas against international competition.

Among the issues raised in the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s 2023 Article IV consultation, published in early September, were notable comments on the Saudi rial’s peg to the US dollar and measures to crack down on local and international corruption.

The UAE's early September announcement that it had set up a federal gambling regulator is a further sign of how the competition between regional economies is pushing them to diversify into areas that would previously have been regarded as too sensitive or even taboo.

Recent data give some grounds for optimism that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s bets on stimulating non-oil growth and liberalising society is yielding dividends, but an IMF report and other recent analysis show just how much further the country needs to go to end its dependency on oil and gas revenues.

G20 summit: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was a prominent figure at the G20 summit in New Delhi on 9/10 September. He held talks with a series of other leaders, including India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Recent gloomy reports on a downturn in Saudi economic growth were underpinned by the announcement that Riyadh was extending its 1m b/d production cut until end-2023. However, the higher prices are not enough to make up for the fall in output.