The biggest economic shake-up since the founding of Saudi Arabia would accelerate subsidy cuts and impose more levies, a plan to spread the burden of lower crude prices among a population more accustomed to government largess.
Outlining his vision in a five-hour interview with Bloomberg News last week, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the measures would raise at least an extra $100 billion a year by 2020, more than tripling non-oil income and balancing the budget.
“It’s a large package of programs that aims to restructure some revenue-generating sectors,” the prince said at the royal compound in Riyadh. Non-oil income rose 35 percent last year to 163.5 billion riyals ($44 billion), according to preliminary budget data.
It’s a radical shift for a country built on petrodollars since the first Saudi oil was discovered almost eight decades ago. Prince Mohammed, 30, and his top aides said the administration navigated plunging oil prices last year through a series of “quick fixes.” While there are no plans to tax incomes, his policies would bring the kingdom closer to the rest of the world, where governments rely on charges to fund spending.
Saudi Green Cards
The prince said authorities are weighing measures that include more steps to restructure subsidies, imposing a value-added tax and a levy on energy and sugary drinks as well as luxury items. Another revenue-raising plan under discussion is a program similar to the U.S. Green Card system that targets expatriates in the kingdom.
The strategy would complement a plan to sell a stake in Saudi Aramco on the stock exchange and create the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, steps meant to make the kingdom more reliant on investment income than oil within 20 years. The $2 trillion fund would be big enough to buy the four largest publicly traded companies on the planet.
The Saudi government is also planning to increase its debt in the meantime to help finance spending and test the market with a dollar bond later this year.
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