Saudi Arabia forecasts slower growth, budget deficit this year

BombOmOm , 10 months ago

Meanwhile, they are spending their budget on The Line, rather than something that will have long term positive economic benefits.

zoe , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

they aren’t creating any value: oil will be irrelevant because it got so much weaponized that it incentivized spending for renewables. Oil rich middle eastern countries invest in laughable assets like F1 teams and airlines, anything that would promote oil use. Airlines will ultimatly go instinct once SpaceX starts shuttling people across the globe in less than one hour, instead of what used to be 12 hour flights (less than 8 hour flights shouldn’t be feasable by Starship, or aren’t economically viable). Such countries have alot of money and just keep investing in trends.

BombOmOm , 10 months ago

Mass point to point rocket travel will not be a thing anytime soon. The main hurdles are extreme cost, horrifically slow load and unload times, and high rates of death. Manned rocket missions have a ~1% fatality rate. That is many, many, many orders of magnitude from anything even approaching safe.

Even if you are somehow ok with such extreme danger levels just to travel, the devastatingly slow load and unload times kill the only stated benefit. You can’t just launch them from anywhere, Space X is talking about requiring a ferry trip to a platform (slow). Then you have to get everyone fitted into (and later out of) a space suit. And no, you can’t just skip basic safety and not put people in a suit that will keep them alive in the event of an emergency. That step alone takes hours.

No, the Concorde is practical in comparison.

zoe , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

lets see how this would pan out. also europeans didn’t make their ariane rockets as profitable as spacex did, and never achieved booster vertical landing. Spacex has a record of delivering on their promises, so they kinda should be taken seriously.

Nudding , 10 months ago

Imagine being stupid enough to be anti-union lol.

surewhynotlem , 10 months ago

Lol @ rocket travel replacing airlines. I can’t even formulate a response explaining how ridiculous that is. But I’m more than happy to bet you very large amounts of money that it won’t happen.

autotldr Bot , 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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CAIRO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has lowered its growth forecast and expects to post a budget deficit this year rather than an earlier projected surplus, a preliminary budget statement showed on Saturday.

The largest Arab economy expects real gross domestic product to grow by 0.03% this year, the document released by the ministry of finance showed, compared with a previous forecast for growth of 3.1%.

Total revenue is now expected to be 1.180 trillion riyals ($314.64 billion) and government spending is forecast to be 1.262 trillion riyals.

Oil prices remain below last year’s average of $100 a barrel.

It said “limited budget deficits” would continue in the medium term due to expansionary spending policies and conservative revenue estimates.

Saudi Arabia’s economy grew 8.7% last year on the back of high oil prices, allowing it to record its first budget surplus in almost a decade

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The original article contains 254 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 43%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!