A recent report by Jadwa Investment Company says that the continuity of implementation of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 objectives by the Ministry of Housing in Saudi Arabia increased the residential mortgage by 157% to exceed SR35 billion. Villa loans accounted for 79% of the total value, according to the report. The report pointed out that there are two main reasons for this remarkable rise. The first is about 30,000 of military members granted subsidized loans without interest during the first half of 2019, which is about 50% of the total mortgages. The other is announcement of "Sakni" to provide 200,000 units for citizens during 2019, include providing 100,000 subsidized loans. The report emphasis that the goal of increasing the level of real estate loans is to raise the percentage of citizens' ownership of housing to 60% by 2020 compared to 50% in 2016, in addition to reducing the cost of housing from 9 times of the annual income to 5 times. The report added that the program "Eskan" that is implemented by the Ministry of Housing and the Real Estate Development Fund provides solutions to enhance access to real estate mortgage for around 1.4 million of beneficiaries. For that, the program classifies the beneficiaries by their income level and their opportunity to obtain subsidized loans. The program also focuses on providing guarantees for citizens to borrow from banks, as well as providing subsidies for rent or development housing to those who are not eligible for borrowing and low-income people. It also focuses on providing houses with appropriate prices in the cities and regions that suffer from a large gap between supply and demand through developing residential areas in government land and building techniques. The report also stressed that one of the most notable developments in Saudi market is the listing of the Saudi stock market "Tadawul" in both the Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Index and the "FTSE" Emerging Markets Index. This has increased the flow of foreign investment to $21 billion, in addition to improving financing system for SMEs, applying the Bankruptcy Law, achieving progress in financial technology field by launching a protective regulatory environment. — SG
