Saudi Arabia’s minister of economy and planning Faisal Alibrahim said the Kingdom will use this year’s oil windfall to accelerate the economy’s diversification from fossil fuels, Bloomberg reports.
The Saudi government will “focus on initiatives to grow the non-oil economy in 2023 but won’t boost fiscal spending,” the minister said in an interview at the Davos conference in Switzerland.
The minister added that Saudi Arabia is “in discussions with companies from all over the world to get them to move some of their operations to the country.”
The Kingdom posted a $15.3 billion budget surplus in the first quarter.
Saudi Arabia’s economy is expected to grow 7 percent in 2022, ahead of other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Counil, according to the Global Economic Update report by the World Bank.
