DUBAI: Saudi Arabia said it plans to issue 118 billion riyals ($31.5 billion) in debt this year.

This has been aimed at helping finance the national budget deficit, the country’s Debt Management Office (DMO) said.

Media reports say the country has borrowed extensively over the past few years to refill state coffers exhausted by a drop in oil prices.

Reports said at the end of 2018, Saudi Arabia had around $150 billion in outstanding government debt of which 54 percent was in local currency and the rest denominated in U.S. dollars.

The country issued $7.5 billion in international bonds in January.

By the end of 2019, Saudi Arabia has planned to have around $181 billion in outstanding debt, media reports said. (Agencies)

HONGKONG: The death of Gerald Cotton, 30, the Chief Operating Officer (CEO) of Quadirga and co-founder of Canada’s biggest crypto currency exchange, having a sole password, has left a huge stash of crypto currencies locked off from the people who own them. He died because of complications arising from Crohn’s disease while traveling in India, according to CNN.
Quadriga, which is based on Vancouver, has said it’s unable to gain access to $145 million of bitcoin and other digital assets, according to CNN. Many of the digital currencies held by Quadriga are stored offline in accounts known as “cold wallets,” a way of protecting them from hackers. Cotten is the only person with access to the wallets, according to the company.

Cotten’s death has plunged Quadriga into crisis and left it struggling to figure out how to refund more than 100,000 of its users. On Tuesday, the company said it was granted creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court as it tries to sort out its financial mess. Cotten’s widow, Jennifer Robertson, said that the laptop that Cotten used to run the currency exchange is encrypted, according to a copy of her affidavit posted online by cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk.

Quadriga also owes about 70 million Canadian dollars ($53 million) in cash that it’s unable to pay back, Jeniffer said, citing difficulties accessing funds through the traditional banking system, CNN has said.

(With inputs from CNN)

BEIJING, Jan 29: Beijing reported GDP of over 3 trillion yuan (446.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, authorities said Wednesday.
According to the municipal statistics bureau, Beijing attained GDP of 3.03 trillion yuan last year, up 6.6 percent.
“Beijing spent a lot of efforts on moving the non-capital functions out of the city and attained a stable economic growth with its quality improved last year,” said Pang Jiangqian, deputy director of the bureau.
The city’s new economy grew 9.3 percent to over 1 trillion yuan, accounting for 33.2 percent of the city’s GDP.
The city’s per capita disposable income also rose 9 percent to 62,361 yuan last year.
The city saw a total consumption of 2.54 trillion yuan, up 7.4 percent thanks to the growing income.
Consumption in the service sector reached 1.37 trillion yuan, up 11.8 percent, contributing 82.6 percent to the city’s total consumption growth.
According to the city’s market regulation bureau, the number of enterprises in science and technology, service, culture, sports and entertainment established last year reached 88,716, accounting for nearly 50 percent of new enterprises in Beijing last year.
“Our company invested in a number of science and technology companies in areas such as artificial intelligence,” said Wu Haiyan with China Growth Capital, a venture capital firm.
The technical income of science and technology companies above a designated scale in Zhongguan science park accounted for 17.2 percent of the companies’ total income in the first 11 months of 2018, up 2.2 percent year on year.
The culture industry in Beijing also developed fast, with companies above a designated scale and public institutions in the industry reporting revenues of 925 billion yuan last year.