Advisers to Saudi Arabia's king approved a long-delayed overhaul of the country's mortgage law after the monarch pledged more than $82 billion to fund home building, at a time governments across the Middle East are offering concessions to quell political unrest.
The Shura Council agreed on its final amendments to the law and passed it to King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz for final approval, according to Saad Mariq, deputy chairman of the council's finance committee.
"The law will propel the creation of private mortgage finance companies, and banks will infuse a lot of money into mortgages," Mariq said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
"I expect to see the injection of tens of billions of riyals into the sector as a result."
King Abdullah promised to increase spending on housing after popular protests led to the overthrow of governments in Egypt and Tunisia, and targeted regimes from Syria to Bahrain.
