00:00And we're just going to talk finally about the IMF, Laurie, which has raised the forecast for Saudi GDP growth.
00:08Can you tell us more about this, too, please?
00:11Yeah, look, this is a really big upgrade. This is from 3% to 3.5%.
00:16The IMF is always tinkering with its forecast, but this is really quite a big increase.
00:22And when it comes down to it, it may be a little bit optimistic, but the real vote of confidence that the IMF is giving here is they're essentially praising Saudi Arabia for realizing that they can no longer depend on oil and petrochemicals,
00:38that that is not a long-term solution to growth, particularly in an economy where there are so many young people,
00:44so many young people who will be hitting the job market over the next decade or so.
00:48Now, Saudi Arabia has had some very well-publicized plans to expand into sport, into entertainment, into construction projects, building new cities.
00:59And the IMF is very, very happy to see that Saudi Arabia is doing this.
01:05And we only have to look at the oil markets to see that Saudi Arabia really is pursuing a strategy that makes sense.
01:12The world is using less oil. We know this. Whether you support renewable power or not, we know that for each bit of GDP that is produced,
01:24it takes less energy than it did a couple of decades ago.
01:27But for economies that are dependent on oil, we saw almost no net move in the oil price after all of the fireworks we had in the Middle East last weekend.
01:37The price of rent crude is roughly where it was before Israel started upping its attacks on Iran and then America stepped in.
01:47Oil is pretty much back to where it was before that at a historically low level.
01:51So it shows you that Saudi Arabia, which is the dominant member of the OPEC cartel, can no longer really dictate the price of oil.
01:58And when they cannot do that, when the cartel cannot artificially lift the price of oil, yet may be time to look at other sources of economic growth.
