
10
Toward Fiscal Stability and Sustainable Development: The Role of Sovereign Funds in Saudi Arabia
Investing in the domestic economy and the risk of ‘Dutch disease’
The so-called ‘Dutch disease’ results from the appreciation of the real
exchange rate lowering the competitiveness of non-resource tradable
sectors (Corden and Neary 1982; Corden 1984). In a xed exchange rate
system, this begins with a large inux of foreign currencies from the exports
of natural resources that increases the national income. If the foreign
currencies are converted to the local currency and spent in the domestic
economy, it generates extra domestic demand for goods and services
from both non-tradable and tradable sectors. Without easy access to the
global labor market, higher domestic demand pushes up wages, which
leads to higher prices for domestically produced goods and services.
Hence, one unit of a foreign currency buys fewer goods and services in the
local economy. Price increases for domestic tradable goods and services
reduces foreign and domestic demand for them since imports become
less expensive. Consequently, the tradable sector shrinks in size. There
are no substitution effects in the non-tradable sector, so an increase in the
demand for its outputs signicantly raises the price level of the sector. This,
in turn, causes real exchange rates to appreciate.
On the other hand, access to an elastic supply of low-wage labor helps to
prevent real exchange rates from appreciating. Increasing the supply of
migrant low-wage labor offsets the rise in the domestic demand for non-
tradable goods and services. Saudi Arabia, for example, was able to mitigate
the appreciation of its real exchange rate through the reliance of its private
sector on cheap foreign labor and pegging its exchange rate to the US$.
However, such a reliance decreases labor productivity, disincentivizes
technological innovation, prevents nationals from being employed in the
private sector and increases their unemployment rate. The availability of
low-wage foreign workers also incentivizes the private sector to seek
government projects in the non-tradeable sector, which hinders the
development of other productive non-oil tradable sectors (Callen et al. 2014).
The ongoing structural changes in the labor market will likely increase
wages and could see a signicant portion of foreign workers replaced with
Saudi workers. Therefore, the leakage of oil rents outside the economy
(through workers’ remittances) could diminish. Furthermore, local
content initiatives are likely to contribute to lower outows of oil income.
Traditionally, large expenditure on imported goods, coupled with an elastic
supply of foreign labor, controlled domestic inationary pressures resulting
from the inows of oil income, and helped to expand the economy’s
absorptive capacity. Capital spending by PIF needs to take the absorptive
capacity of the economy into consideration to prevent macroeconomic
‘overheating’ that could damage the efciency of this spending. The
inexibility of the Saudi labor market presents a serious bottleneck that
could limit the ability of the economy to absorb more inows of oil income.
Therefore, government investment programs that enhance the productivity
of the labor force, in order to offset its inexibility, are essential.
Conclusion
As an oil-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia is vulnerable to volatile and
uncertain revenue streams that could induce pro-cyclical scal policies.
The instability of Saudi government spending has adverse effects on the
country’s investment climate because it discourages the private sector from
making long-term investments. The associated cost of revenue volatility for
the Saudi economy is signicant, as outlined in Pierru and Matar (2014).
The ongoing
structural changes
in the labor market
will likely increase
wages and could see
a signicant portion
of foreign workers
replaced with Saudi
workers