{"id":4820,"date":"2016-02-16T02:18:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T19:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/?p=4820"},"modified":"2016-02-15T23:33:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:33:21","slug":"saudi-business-leader-seeks-king-salmans-help-on-government-payments-to-construction-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/saudi-business-leader-seeks-king-salmans-help-on-government-payments-to-construction-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi business leader seeks King Salman's help on government payments to construction firms"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nReutersA leading Saudi Arabian businessman has asked the king to intervene to ensure that the government makes delayed payments to construction companies, in a sign of growing pressure on the economy due to low oil prices.Some construction firms have seen scheduled payments from the government delayed by over six months, Abdulrahman Al Zamil, president of the Council of Saudi Chambers business association, wrote in a letter to King Salman.
\n“If the delay in payments continues, these companies will be at risk of default, or go completely out of business,” said the letter.Direct pleas to the monarch are not unknown in Saudi Arabia, but the letter underlined the pressures facing the Saudi construction sector, which has run into difficulties since the second half of last year as the government has reduced spending in response to low oil prices.
\nThe finance ministry has cut advance payments to firms doing state construction work, the government has awarded fewer contracts, and its payments to companies for work already done have slowed, industry executives say.Despite shrinking oil revenues, the government does not lack money to pay its debts; it still has about US$600 billion in overseas assets. But the spending clampdown appears to have slowed approvals for payments and their disbursement.
\nPartly because of the payment delays, some firms have delayed paying their staff or laid off thousands of workers, and several have begun talks to reschedule debts. Jabal Omar Development said last month it was in talks with creditors after failing to make a 650-million Saudi riyal first repayment on a 3-billion Saudi riyal government loan.In his letter, Mr Zamil said construction companies hoped authorities would investigate the situation and create a mechanism for the firms to receive money owed to them.
\n“The contracting sector seems to have been hit twice, first by controls on government spending on projects, and second by delays in receiving financial payments,” said prominent local economist Fadl Al Buainain.”Adding to that the tightening liquidity and banks being reluctant to lend to contractors because of increased risk, the result becomes a painful negative impact on these companies.”John Sfakianakis, a Riyadh-based economist, said: “It’s not the government’s intention to see growth slow in the private sector and it will surely take an appropriate course of action.”
\nbusiness@thenational.aeFollow The National’s Business section on Twitter
\n
\nSource : thenational.ae
\nRead more…Saudi business leader seeks King Salman’s help on government payments to construction firms<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ReutersA leading Saudi Arabian businessman has asked the king to intervene to ensure that...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-1fK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":36054,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/saudi-government-payments-to-construction-firms-may-not-mean-a-speedy-market-recovery-builders-warn\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":0},"title":"Saudi government payments to construction firms may not mean a speedy market recovery, builders warn","date":"November 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Builders have cautioned that the Saudi government's instigation of repayments to its suffering construction industry may not avert a prolonged lull next year before a recovery takes hold of the market. Joseph Daher, the chief executive of the Jeddah-based Almabani General Contractors, said payments started to filter through from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4277,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/saudi-arabian-builders-on-government-contracts-having-problems-paying-staff\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":1},"title":"Saudi Arabian builders on government contracts having problems paying staff","date":"February 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r \r Some Saudi Arabian construction companies are struggling to pay their staff on time in a sign of growing pressure on the economy from low oil prices, which are causing the government to slow spending on building projects.In an unusual move this week, the Ministry of Labour issued a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11736,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/delayed-payments-to-saudi-arabias-construction-sector-start-to-filter-through\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":2},"title":"Delayed payments to Saudi Arabia's construction sector start to filter through","date":"April 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r The Saudi government's pledge to pay 70 per cent of the outstanding bills owed to the country's construction sector is slowly starting to feed through to company accounts. In an interview with The National, George Ball, the chief financial officer of the global engineering consultancy Parsons, said: \"We began\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51058,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/delayed-gcc-payments-discourage-consultancy-firms\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":3},"title":"Delayed GCC payments discourage consultancy firms","date":"April 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\r \u00a0Growth in the consultancy market in the GCC is slowing dramatically as multinational firms have been deterred by late payment issues.A study by Source Global Research (Source) found that the consultancy market grew by 6 per cent over the past two years, which is a decline from 15 per\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12854,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/saudi-binladin-to-lay-off-another-14000-staff-bringing-total-departures-to-69000\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":4},"title":"Saudi Binladin to lay off another 14,000 staff, bringing total departures to 69,000","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Saudi Binladin Group has confirmed that it is working on processing final payments for about 14,000 workers that will allow them to leave the company within the next month, following on from the recent departure of about 55,000 staff.The company, which had employed more than 200,000 staff before its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28519,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/saudi-binladins-cash-flow-crisis-starts-to-ease\/","url_meta":{"origin":4820,"position":5},"title":"Saudi Binladin's cash flow crisis starts to ease","date":"October 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r The cash flow crisis that has engulfed Saudi Arabia's biggest builder, Saudi Binladin Group, has started to ease with much-needed payments from the kingdom's finance ministry filtering through. The Wall Street Journal had reported that payments of between US$800 million (Dh2.9 billion) to $1.1bn had been made to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}