More than a third of the Saudi budget goes to education, health and development

Saudi Arabia has released the budget expenditures for 2017; more than a third of its expenses will be in two key emerging sectors: the education with more than 200 billion riyals, and the health and social development sector with 120 billion riyals.

The figures allocated for the education and health and social development sectors represent 36% of the total estimated budget amounting to 890 billion riyals.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, presided over the Cabinet meeting on Thursday and said that the current budget will support the “integration of all governmental institutions to further enhance their financial discipline and promote transparency and fairness.”

King Salman stressed that the 2017 budget aims to “raise the efficiency of the spending.” This year’s budget is 6% higher than last year’s.

The 890 billion riyals’ budget was divided on 9 major sectors: 200 billion riyals for education, 190 billion for the military and 120 billion for health sector and social development sector.

The budget has allocated 107 billion riyals for the public programs, 96.6 billion for security and administrative sectors and 52 billion for the basic equipment and transportation sector.

47.9 billion riyals were allocated for the municipal services sector, 47.2 billion for economic resources and 26.7 billion public administration sector.