MUSCAT: Access to a debt market teeming with yield-hungry investors is helping some cash-strapped nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council kick reforms down the road.
Taking advantage of attractive interest rates, Oman raised $6.5 billion in January, its biggest sale on record, to help bridge deficits. And Bahrain, the smallest of the GCC’s six nations, tapped the international bond markets for $3.6 billion in 2017. It may issue this year to help meet funding needs. Junk-rated Oman and Bahrain have the weakest finances in the GCC and face making politically unpopular decisions such as freezing public sector employment and cut spending significantly.
Bahrain implemented some measures to trim expenditure, mainly reducing subsidies and transfers, which lowered their contribution to total expenditure to about 25 percent in 2017 from 29 percent in 2014, S&P Global Ratings said in a report in December.
