JEDDAH – King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, will chair the Council of Ministers' extraordinary session Saturday to approve and announce the new state budget. Informed sources told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that this session will be held at King Abdullah's palace, Riyadh, after Dhuhr (noon) prayer. After the budget session, the Cabinet will not meet for nearly two weeks. The total revenue is expected to grow by 11.7 % up to SR1.33 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year while the total expenditure is expected to grow by 4.7 % up to SR922.5 billion by the end of the current year. The surplus is also expected to reach SR410 billion by the end of the year 2012, the highest in the Kingdom's history, according to the IMF. Experts said the new general budget would record a big increase in actual revenues for the current year, and that would be much higher than that of the government's projections. They also noted that the Kingdom's economy is poised to face fallout of unemployment and inflationary trends in the coming year. Intisar Al-Maleh, an economist, cautioned that the Kingdom should take account of the warning from the International Monetary Fund about the possible return of fiscal deficit to a number of GCC states after two years. She said the major challenges facing the Saudi economy in 2013 would be unemployment and inflation. “The government has to rein in the disturbing unemployment rates especially after halting the monthly unemployment allowance, which is being given to some 1.5 million jobless Saudis who have been registered under the Hafiz scheme. The government has to find out quick solutions to accommodate huge number of unemployed young men and women in the local market,” she said. Fadhl Al-Buainain, another expert, underlined the need to get rid of all the public debt, saying “this would help boost the cash liquidity of the local banks so that they can extend more real estate financing as well as funding to private companies.”
