Changing global balance of financial power watch, Saudi Arabian edition

The Saudis added about $72b to their foreign assets last year.   More actually.  The Saudi current account surplus was about $95b.  But $72b of the rise in their foreign assets shows up on the balance sheet of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency.   SAMA’s bank deposits increased by $2.5b, its holdings of foreign securities by $68.2b. 

That is why I thought trying to infer data on the currency composition of Saudi reserves from the BIS deposit data was a bit risky. But don’t expect to find much evidence of Saudi inflows in the US data either (The Saudis are one of the Asian oil exporters).  This is a case where the debtor and creditor data just don’t match.