Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia’s non-oil income jumped 63% in the three-month period ended March 2018, helped by improved tax receipts.

 The kingdom’s revenue increased to SAR 52.3 billion ($14 billion) in Q1-18, on the back of introducing the value-added tax (VAT) as of 1 January 2018.

In a bid to reduce the economy’s dependence on petrodollars, Saudi Arabia has taken a raft of measures over the past two years, including a tax on expatriates working in the GCC nation, the finance ministry said, adding that zakat revenue also saw a significant improvement.

In the same vein, the Saudi government has increased fuel and electricity prices, along with slightly slashing public sector’s allowances.

However, the biggest Middle Eastern economy has boosted spending in 2018 in an effort to alleviate reform impacts on the economic growth, pushing the timeline for narrowing its budget deficit to 2023 from 2019, according to Bloomberg News.

The kingdom's oil revenue rose by 2% to SAR 114 billion in Q1-18, compared with the same period a year earlier, while spending hiked 18% to SAR 200.6 billion, the finance ministry's data showed.

The data highlighted “rapid and significant progress in economic reform to help achieve the medium-term fiscal balance programme goals for 2023,” finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan commented.

The finance ministry mentioned that the budget deficit stood at SAR 34.3 billion in the first three months of 2018, up 18% from the estimated annual shortfall.