Saudi Arabia to announce the budget for the New Year 2023
According to press reports, the Saudi Council of Ministers will hold a Wednesday session to approve the state’s budget for the new fiscal year (2023).
This session is the first initiative of its kind at the level of determining a date for approving the budget declaration.
The Saudi Ministry of Finance announced, in a preliminary statement that it revealed last September, its estimate of the budget for the new year 2023
It is expected that the volume of revenues would be about SAR 1123 billion (299.4 billion dollars), compared to the volume of expenses of SAR 1114 billion (297 billion dollars), i.e. a surplus of SAR 9 billion.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Finance, Saudi Arabia will have returned to the path of achieving surpluses in its budgets in 2022. This is after 8 years of recording deficits in previous budgets.
The ministry also estimates that the current year’s revenues will reach SAR 1.222 trillion and expenditures will reach SAR 1.132 trillion, which represents a large surplus of SAR 90 billion ($24 billion).
The Saudi Ministry of Finance signed recently financing agreements with some local banks, with a value of SAR 25 billion, to implement some infrastructure projects scheduled to start in 2023 and 2024, to accelerate the entry into force of these projects.
The signing of these agreements was arranged by the National Center for Debt Management in line with the direction of the Ministry of Finance to enable and support strategic infrastructure projects in the context of achieving the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.
This approach aims to support financial sustainability, provide liquidity, and diversify financing channels at reasonable prices, especially since the coming period will witness future hikes in interest rates.
The infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is witnessing rapid development, through extensive government spending and the participation of the private sector, in addition to opening the way for foreign investment in the sectors of transportation, energy, electricity, water, communications, and others.
