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Gulf royal families have generally been closely associated with only a narrow range of traditional preferred sports – including camel racing, horse racing and falconry – but younger Saudi princes and princesses now occupy senior positions in bodies overseeing a far wider range of pursuits, from motorsport and esports to triathlons and diving. Their efforts to promote sports and attract international events feed into Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's economic and social diversification drive.

Securing workable energy, economic and security relations with Turkey has even greater urgency for Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government as the KRG says it can no longer afford to pay its employees’ salaries due to the closure since late March of the vital crude oil export pipeline.

The high-profile campaign to make Saudi Arabia a global power in football, golf and other sports has, in many ways, eclipsed the state's domestic spending – which conventional policy wonks might say should be of greater importance to the 22m population – but the activities of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS)'s prized Public Investment Fund (PIF) over the past few months tells an equally important story.

Oman has introduced a unified national pension scheme, merging the assets and liabilities of 11 existing pension systems into a single Social Protection Fund. The reform is based on a unified regulatory regime for contributions, payments and retirement ages. It will reflect both need and its members' history of payment contributions.

Kuwait's finance minister Manaf Al-Hajeri resigned on 11 July, less than a month after his appointment to Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nawaf Al-Sabah’s cabinet, reportedly in protest at the decision to move responsibility for the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) over to minister of state for economic affairs and investment Saad Al-Barrak, who also serves as oil minister.

The UAE's federal cabinet agreed to set up a Ministry of Investment, with Mohammed Hassan Al-Suwaidi named as the inaugural investment minister. The cabinet also approved a federal law to set up a Financial Stability Council, which aims to underpin stability in the markets and monitor associated risks.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa Al-Sudani's government has launched Iraq down a perilous fiscal path, with an extravagant three-year budget for 2023-25 which gained Council of Representatives (Majlis an-Nuwwab or parliament) approval.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured a third term as Turkey's president in late May, despite significant weaknesses in the domestic economy and a stronger than usual opposition challenge. Gulf leaders quickly called to congratulate Erdoğan and the UAE president was one of the first to do so in person – a sign that, even if they are increasingly reluctant to write blank cheques, they are still keen to do business with a country with significant economic and military potential.

Few doubt Al-Ula would have remained an interesting but little-visited pre-Islamic site in north-western Saudi Arabia without Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and his multinational advisors. Instead, with their input, the Nabatean site of Medain Saleh has become an ambitious experiment in economic and social reinvention.

Huge art and archaeology projects say a lot about contemporary Saudi Arabia, as Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) pushes ahead with ever-expanding ambitions to remodel the country's economy and society. Major cultural developments in the north-west are emerging as a hub, with big budgets drawing in international institutions, architects, artists and curators, but the changes also provide scope for significant local expression, including for female and younger artists – even as MBS' critics languish in prison, some facing death penalties.

The Ministry of Finance set out further details of the UAE’s federal corporate tax regime in May, ahead of the new tax’s launch on 1 June.

Sharjah’s population has grown by 22% since 2015, rising from 1.4m to 1.8m over that time, according to preliminary results from the census carried out in 2022 and announced by the Department of Statistics and Community Development late May.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has launched an ambitious project to develop a $17bn transport network linking the north and south of Iraq. The Development Road Initiative will start at the under-construction Grand Faw port in the south and travel northwards via 1,200km of rail lines and roads.

Iran's Labour Ministry director for social insurance Sajjad Padam was dismissed from his post after saying that the government "may have to sell off Kish and Qeshm islands and even oil assets in Khuzestan" in order to settle the country’s debts with China.

Qatari Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al-Thani has made another revised bid to buy Manchester United Football Club (MUFC), in an effort to see off a rival approach from United Kingdom-based petrochemicals giant Ineos Group’s boss Jim Ratcliffe.