Saudi Arabia saves over SAR 500 mln on spending efficiency: Al-Jadaan

Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan

Saudi Arabia has saved SAR 500 billion over the last four years until mid-2021, backed by its spending efficiency efforts, SPA reported, citing Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan.

Since the launch of Vision 2030, the state’s public deficit was reduced from 15.8% in 2015 to 4.5% in 2019.

The Kingdom is expected to post lower deficit in 2021, after containing the financial and economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, backed by several initiatives to increase non-oil revenue, which rose from SAR 166 billion in 2015 to SAR 369 billion in 2020. Moreover, the Saudi government focused on enhancing financial planning, as the annual variance of the actual performance of expenditure came below its forecasts, down from an average of 16% in the period from 2014 to 2016, to 4% in the period from 2017 to 2019.

Saudi Arabia continued digitizing payments, recording 36% growth in e-transactions out of the total payments in 2019, exceeding the 28% target of the Financial Sector Development Program (FSDP) in 2020.

The Saudi leaders’ efforts contributed to a gradual recovery of the Kingdom’s economy during the last exceptional period, which witnessed a lot of concerted efforts and solid programs to address the pandemic.

“We have the right to be proud of Saudi Arabia’s solid economy and its ability to overcome the COVID-19 fallout with high flexibility,” Al-Jadaan concluded.

Saudi Arabia reported significant economic improvement. Non-oil economy grew from 0.2% in 2016 to 3.3% in 2019, reaching 5.4% in H1 2021, driven by a rise in private investments, better productivity and services.