Record sums pouring in: DB

With May 2013 experiencing inflows of $655 million, the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region registered the highest inflows over the past five years (data available from 2009), Deutsche Bank said in a statement this afternoon.

On an aggregate basis, Mena markets posted around $2 billion of net inflows since the start of this year – also a record level – versus an outflow of $192 million during the same period in 2012, the bank said.

Of the $655 million for May, Saudi Arabia led the rally with $308 million of inflows, followed by Qatar and Dubai with $131m and $129m, respectively.

For Qatar this is a hat-trick of inflows, which is a major reversal of the trend seen throughout 2011-12 when some $1.3 billion of foreign funds exited the country.

Aleksandar Stojanovski, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank. said: “MENA markets continue to impress with their solid performance. Dubai has advanced by more than 47 per cent year to date, followed by Abu Dhabi at 39 per cent and Kuwait 35 per cent. The recent upgrade in the Emerging Market index of the UAE and Qatar reflects the confidence of international investors and will further leverage the region’s visibility to represent a potential $400m to $450m of incremental funds inflows for each country.”

On a year-to-date basis except for Egypt, which is down 14 per cent, all the other markets were up as follows: Oman by 16 per cent, Qatar 14 per cent, Bahrain 13 per cent, Saudi Arabia 11 per cent and Jordan 3 per cent.

Deutsche Bank’s Mena portfolio is up by 22.3 per cent since its last revision in January 2013, and has outperformed the regional market by 1527 bps. For the other regional markets for which Deutsche Bank track the fund flow data, Kuwait had an inflow of $47m and Abu Dhabi registered $40m.