Washington: Oil-rich Saudi Arabia was the 13th largest holder of US debt at USD 116.8 billion by March, the Treasury Department has announced, ending four decades of keeping the sensitive figure secret.
Saudi Arabia stockpiled USD 116.8 billion of US Treasuries as of March, the Treasury Department said on Monday, making the Gulf country the 13th largest foreign holder of US debt, though well behind the USD 1 trillion-plus owned by China and Japan each.
Unlike with most other major owners of US debt, the Treasury Department kept Saudi Arabia's precise holdings secret since the 1970s. Till now, Saudi's holdings were lumped together with that of other oil exporting nations, including Venezuela and Iraq. The Treasury Department has now disclosed precise holdings by specific countries that were previously grouped together.
A Treasury official told CNNMoney the move was made following a review aimed at trying to provide more "comprehensive and transparent" data.
It is also possible that Saudi Arabia owns even more US debt than what was revealed on Monday, the report said.
That is because Saudi Arabia's central bank listed owning USD 587 billion of foreign reserves as of March. Typically, central banks park the majority of their foreign reserves in US Treasuries. In other words, the numbers don't really add up, the report said.
The Saudi mystery had taken on greater significance in recent months. Since the end of 2014 the Saudis have burned through more than USD 130 billion of foreign-exchange reserves -- most likely including US debt -- to help cope with the crash in oil prices.
The Treasury Department said Saudi Arabia's US debt holdings of USD 116.8 billion are down from USD 123.6 billion in January.
Additionally, rising tensions between the US and Saudi Arabia led the kingdom to make a recent shocking threat.
Saudi Arabia threatened to sell off American assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow 9/11 terror attack victims to sue foreign governments.
A Saudi source at the time told CNNMoney that the kingdom was "serious" about this threat.
Dumping a vast sum of US Treasuries at once could cause the securities to tank, potentially destabilising global financial markets.
The new Treasury report also showed that the Cayman Islands, a country of less than 60,000 people, owned USD 265 billion of US Treasuries as of March.
That's the third-highest sum in the world and a reflection of the nation's status as a major tax haven. The Cayman Islands does not have a corporate tax, encouraging multinational companies to store vast sums of money there to avoid taxes, the CNN report said.
Likewise, Bermuda, another popular tax haven, is sitting on USD 63 billion of US debt. Previously both the Cayman Islands and Bermuda were lumped together in a group of Caribbean banking centre nations.
