Saudi Arabia’s Budget Deficit Surged Before the Oil Price Crash

Saudi Arabia’s Budget Deficit Surged Before the Oil Price Crash

The recent oil price crash will surely hit Saudi Arabia’s state finances going forward, but the Kingdom already booked a hefty budget deficit for the first quarter, before oil prices dropped dramatically. During the first quarter of the year, the budget deficit of the world’s top crude oil exporter swelled to $15.6 billion (58.7 billion Saudi riyals), data from the Saudi Finance Ministry showed. That’s already more than half of the deficit the K…

Saudi Arabia’s Budget Deficit Soared Even Before Oil’s Slump

Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit ballooned in the first quarter, even before oil’s latest drop put additional pressure on the kingdom’s finances.

Riyadh’s debt hit a record high in the first quarter. The Crown Prince’s huge investments, such as the city of Neom, have increased borrowing. The decline in oil prices is making the picture worse. Trump’s $1 trillion investment demand is equivalent to the Saudi economy’s largest budget deficit in recent years.

Saudi Economic Diversification and the Current Account Deficit

Amid the twin fiscal and current account deficits recorded in Saudi Arabia in 2024, it is easy to lose sight of the continued progress made in economic diversification during the year in terms of exports, output, government revenue, and, to a lesser degree, employment. Nevertheless, the high levels of public sector spending and the associated strong growth in imports and expatriate worker remittances together with relatively low oil export volum…

Saudi budget deficit jumps fourfold as oil slumps

$16bn from $3.3bn last year Oil revenues down 18% Non-oil revenues up by 2% Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit rose nearly fourfold in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year, driven by a sharp drop in oil revenues. The kingdom reported a budget deficit of SAR59 billion ($16 billion) in the quarter ended March 2025 from $3.3 billion a year before. Total revenues fell 10 percent to SAR264 billion, as spending rose 5 percent to …

Saudi Arabia reports first-quarter deficit of US$15.65 billion

Saudi Arabia’s deficit widened significantly to US$15.65 billion in the first quarter of 2025 from US$3.30 billion a year before as oil revenues fell 18 per cent to 149.810 billion riyals (S$51.43 billion), its finance ministry said on Monday (May 5).