Economics
Saudi Arabia Looks at ‘Painful’ Measures, Deep Spending Cuts
- Finance minister changes tone to warn of severity of crisis
- Government seeing major loss of revenue from oil market crash
A deserted street sits in th coastal eity of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 21.
Photographer: Bandar Aldandani/AFP via Getty Images
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Saudi Arabia will need to take “painful” measures and look for deep spending cuts as the kingdom faces a double crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the meltdown in global oil markets, its finance minister said on Saturday.
“The kingdom hasn’t witnessed a crisis of this severity over the past decades,” Mohammed Al-Jadaan said in an interview with Saudi television station Al-Arabiya. “It’s very important that we take very tough and strong measures, and they might be painful, but they’re necessary.”