Economics
Saudi Arabia to Boost 2023 Spending and Post Narrow Surplus
- Kingdom forecasts budget surplus at 0.2% of GDP next year
- Spending is forecast to increase to 1.1 trillion riyals
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Photographer: Waseem Obaidi/Bloomberg
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Saudi Arabia announced a spending boost that will sharply narrow next year’s budget surplus as it looks to tackle the impact of inflation and use its oil windfall to accelerate the development of economic diversification projects.
The kingdom’s Finance Ministry said in a preliminary budget statement on Friday that it expects a surplus of 9 billion riyals ($2.4 billion) next year, or 0.2% of gross domestic product -- smaller than an earlier estimate of 27 billion riyals.