An Assessment of Saudi Arabia's Trade Performance with Selected Trading Partners.

Over the past fifteen years or so there has been a rapid and steady growth in Saudi Arabia's international trade activity. The rate and amount of growth has varied somewhat between Saudi Arabia and its trading partners. This paper presents a summary of the Saudi import-export trends from 1971 to 1984. It assesses Saudi Arabia's trade performance with its selected trading partners by employing an adaptation of the "Revealed Comparative Advantage" concept (RCA). Besides Saudi officials, the preliminary picture presented in this paper will be of interest to exporters to Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that Saudi oil exports took a dip after 1981, the economy is still one of the strongest in the world. The RCA concept rests on the assumption that export-import ratios should reflect relative advantage, to the extent that comparative advantage determines the patterns of international trade flows. The higher the ratio of the value of exports over the value of imports, the higher the country's comparative advantage. Although the RCA concept has several limitations, it can be made more useful by examining export-import ratios for specific product categories using disaggregated trade data. The fact that the RCA method requires readily available foreign trade statistics makes it a convenient tool for estimating comparative advantages.