Saudi Arabia’s budget will be announced tomorrow and will include a “focus on expansion, development and investment” according to comments made on Al-Arabiya TV by a Saudi finance ministry official, and reported in Reuters.
“If there was to be a title for the 2018 budget, it would be the budget of expansion and development and investment,” Saad al-Shahrani, general director of the ministry’s macro-fiscal policy unit said. “It will also focus on capital and investment expenditure. The citizen and the private sector will have a big part of it and it will simulate the private sector.”
Asked if the budget would involve additional reforms, he said previously announced plans contained all measures for 2018. “We do not expect new reforms or new taxes.”
Another MoF official, the Deputy Minister of Budget and Organizational Affairs Yaser al-Quhidan, said that the 2018 budget is evidence that “we are on track to manage our economy effectively despite difficult international circumstances,” according to comments in the Saudi-owned Asharq Alawsat.
The modestly expansionary budget with a rise in infrastructure spending follows two years of austerity.
