Dr. Ahmed Al-Kholifey, who has been the governor of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) since 2016, has been appointed as an adviser at the Royal Court, with the rank of minister. 

Al-Kholifey received a bachelor’s degree in law from the King Saud University. He also obtained a master’s degree in business administration and a Ph.D. in economics from Colorado State University, US.

He started his career as a legal specialist at the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, which was in 2019 divided into two ministries — the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Energy. In 1995, he joined SAMA where he worked as an economic adviser and director general of its economic research and statistics department.

In 2011, Al-Kholifey was appointed as the executive director for Saudi Arabia at the International Monetary Fund, a position he held until 2013, when he was appointed SAMA’s deputy governor for research and international affairs. Three years later, a royal order appointed Al-Kholifey as SAMA governor before another order relieved him from his position, appointing him as an advisor at the Royal Court.

Al-Kholifey has recently been awarded Central Banker of the Year for the Middle East 2020 by The Banker magazine in London. The award recognizes not only SAMA’s measures to protect the banking sector and the wider economy from harm in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the body’s innovation agenda, even in the middle of the crisis.

“SAMA has pulled out all the stops during 2020 in a bid to shield banks and local businesses from the impact of lockdown measures designed to limit the spread of COVID-19, together with the collapse in the Kingdom’s oil revenues in the wake of the global economic crisis,” The Banker said on its website when announcing this year’s awards.