The most important event these days in Saudi Arabia, the most important country economically in the Middle East, is the announcement of the general budget for the new financial year. Saudis receive news of the new budget whilst knowing that the economic situation of oil, the most important commodity, is critical and sensitive. The situation is critical and sensitive whether you consider the price which has experienced a drop, or supply and demand which has been hit by a clear stagnation. This of course will have an effect which cannot be ignored on revenues and thus on aspects of expenditure. The media has made the coming economic challenges and the implications of the fall in oil prices on the local economy clear to the people. It has also refrained from using exaggerated and optimistic language that was used on previous occasions when the Saudi economy was faced with the challenge of falling oil prices.

Today, realism and logic are required to deal with the severe changes that befell the region in general and petrol in particular. The budget addresses the new reality where policies of support will be re-engineered to be more focused, effective and designed to reach those who deserve support in a faster and more accurate way that also reduces waste. It will also pave the way for policies that display new and intense attention towards the rationalisation of expenditure (this is a very important quest) that reflects rational and realistic cooperation with market changes. The budget highlights “decidedness”, and not the choice to diversify sources of income because this is a very “harsh” year from a financial perspective due to falling oil price rates that the world has not seen for a long time. As a result, there will be positive pressure on all to speed up the activation of the desired sectors which have been selected previously.