The regional index slipped into its lowest value during the course of the year on the week ending 20 November. All countries save for Iran and Bahrain registered a negative performance on the index, which hit just under $3.24 trillion.

Saudi Arabia’s market declined the most, with a 2.6 per cent drop over the previous week. The status of $24bn-worth of projects – mostly mixed-use – in the kingdom was changed to on-hold due to absence of any recent developments. These include the Khozam Development in Jeddah, which had an estimated budget of $12.3bn, Al-Shoula’s Riyadh Ajmakan ($5.9bn) and the Al-Diriyah Festival City ($2.7bn), also of Riyadh, and the $2bn The Kaaki Development in Mecca.

The estimated budget for the Ruwais area development project in Jeddah was also downgraded by $10bn, from an original estimate of about $13.8bn, while the $1.2bn Al-Jubail Polysilicon plant was cancelled.

At $1.01 trillion, the kingdom’s projects market accounted for 38.5 per cent of the GCC total and 31 per cent of the Gulf Projects Index total. It did not help that only four new projects, which together have an estimated budget of $2.3bn, were added into the kingdom’s index during the week.

An upward adjustment to the estimated budgets for the Bushehr nuclear plants (2 and 3) caused a $7.7bn, or 3.1 per cent, uptick to Iran’s projects market index value.

UAE added 22 new projects with a combined budget estimated at $4bn, led by the north district and eastern extension district of the Meydan Horizon project. However, the UAE still shed  0.4 per cent on the index due to $1.8bn of projects being put on hold, $280m being completed, and about $5.3bn-worth of project being affected by downward budget adjustments.

Qatar’s projects market fared worse than the UAE by falling 0.9 per cent. No new projects were added during the week, the planned $1.5bn phase 2 of Oryx’s gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant was put on hold, and $145m-worth of projects were completed.

Bahrain’s positive performance follows the introduction of four new projects in the industrial, construction and power sectors with a combined estimated budget of $268m.

The best performing week for the index so far came two months earlier on 15 September when the index value climbed to close to $3.47 trillion.