The Fiscal Sustainability Program, previously launched as the Fiscal Balance Program at the end of 2016, is a medium-term fiscal planning mechanism to sustain the public finances and achieve a balanced budget. Since its launch, the Program has contributed to the establishment of a financial system and tools capable of influencing and positive interaction with variables and transformations at the financial and economic level to achieve structural reforms that synchronize with the requirements of the transformation phase. The Program also contributed to strengthening financial discipline and developing public finances through the establishment of several entities, such as (Government Expenditure & Projects Efficiency Authority, the National Debt Management Center, and the Non-Oil Revenue Development Center).
The Program has achieved many goals in terms of national systems related to public finance and also helped in controlling the deficit ratios of GDP from 15.8% in 2015 to 4.5% in 2019, and this has strengthened Saudi Arabia's financial position in dealing with external shocks, many structural reforms were implemented in the process of preparing the Kingdom’s budget and raising the quality of budget implementation, as the average annual variance of the actual performance of total expenditures decreased from its budget estimates from an average of 16% during the period (2014-2016) to an average of 4% during program implementation (2017-2019). Non-oil revenues have also been enhanced and the public finances have been prepared to reach a sustainable stage by building on what has been achieved, raising the quality of financial planning, and developing the Program's directions for the fiscal sustainability era.
In light of this, the variables that should be taken into account in setting priorities and implementing mechanisms for the next stage were determined. The focus will be on developing public policies that support the realization of Vision 2030, considering the adoption of efficiency, impactfulness and ensuring that these public policies comply with the improvement of the balance of payments, GDP growth and the creation of job opportunities for the citizens.
The Fiscal Sustainability Program seeks to complement past efforts in achieving the desired goals by completing work on the initiatives of the Fiscal Balance Program, in addition to adopting fiscal policies, which are numerical determinants on the budget that are applied to achieve the medium and long-term goals of the fiscal policy.
