العربيةAsk

Money and business in the Middle East.

Sources & Methodology

Every figure in carries its value, unit, period, source, source URL, source date, last-updated date and verification status. No figure is shown before an editor has verified and published it.

Tier 1: national statistics offices, central banks and ministries; the IMF, World Bank and ILO; company and fund annual reports and official disclosures. Tier 2: reputable press, used for announcements only and labelled as such. Tier 3 sources are used only for a sovereign fund's size when the fund publishes none, and are then labelled as an estimate (policy of 1 Oct 2026).

The Tier 3 exception: a sovereign fund's size only. accepts an estimate from a Tier 3 source only when all three conditions hold: (1) the figure is a sovereign fund's size — its total assets or assets under management — and nothing else; (2) the fund itself publishes no figure for its size; once it does, its own figure replaces the estimate and the estimate is withdrawn; (3) the figure is labelled "estimate", with the estimating firm named, its tier shown and the date it was accessed. The same firms' statistics on funds' investment activity (deal values and counts, such as Global SWF's) never enter 's data, comparisons or rankings; a story may quote them with the source named and its tier shown.

Approved editorial content: selected ontime+ stories appear in as editorial coverage, not as a primary source of figures. A number that reaches through an article is attributed to the body that originally issued it (a statistics office, a central bank, a company filing), and is labelled explicitly when an article is the only available source. A company's disclosure is a primary source for its own results — not for everything it says about the market.

Methodologies differ across countries (nationals versus total unemployment, fiscal versus calendar years); shows the definition and period with every indicator and never silently compares mismatched definitions.

Sources

Sources behind at least one published figure or relationship, and ontime+, whose journalism Ask and the news sections draw on.

Tier 1 · official

Tier 2 · reputable press

Tier 3

Approved editorial content · ontime+