Saudi Arabia Monetary agency (SAMA)

Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency (SAMA

The Saudi Arabian Monitoring Agency (SAMA ) was established in the year 1952 as the Central bank of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . SAMA guides and supervises the development of the banking system in the Kingdom , in both the private and public sectors (SAMIRAD , 2010 . Situated in Riyadh , the agency also issues Saudi Riyals , the national currency and regulates its value . The establishment of SAMA can be traced back to the days when the Kingdom did not have an exclusive monitoring system of its own . Foreign currencies were

freely circulated , when the government issued the silver riyal in 1927 , in an attempt to standardize the monetary units circulated within the Kingdom . With increasing oil revenues , domestic and foreign banks were established that were mainly involved in imports and commercial trading . Moneychangers and services directed at pilgrims visiting Mecca too were operating . By the mid-twentieth century , there was an increasing need for policy implementation and control in the banking arena , coinciding with the higher government expenditures and emergence of new private banking institutions . Thus in 1952 , SAMA was created to address these needs in line with Islamic law (Photius , 2004 .With the absence of Saudi currency notes , one of the most important tasks of SAMA was to introduce the Saudi currency . Over the years , the roles and responsibilities of SAMA had increased considerably given the economic growth of the Kingdom and the developments in the financial system . Among the primary goals of SAMA is the need to...