Saudi shares slumped 6.8 percent as trading opened Sunday, a day after the finance minister announced “painful” measures to tackle the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Almost all the listed stocks on the Arab world’s largest bourse were in the red just minutes after the start of trading.

Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said late Saturday that the kingdom would take “drastic measures” to face the double shock of the novel coronavirus and low oil prices.

“Some of these measures could be painful,” he said in an interview with Saudi-owned news channel Al-Arabiya.

He said the world’s leading crude exporter would borrow close to $60 billion this year to plug a huge budget deficit.

Saudi Jadwa Investment, an independent think-tank, forecast Thursday that the kingdom would post a record $112 billion budget deficit this year.

The International Monetary Fund in April projected that the Saudi economy would contract by 2.3 percent this year.

Capital Economics, a London-based think-tank, said the contraction would be at least 5.0 percent.

Source: AFP