Oil Price Crash Forces Saudi Arabia To Implement Tough Austerity Measures

Saudi Arabia is tripling its value-added tax (VAT) and suspending cost-of-living allowances as part of a new round of painful austerity measures to save the Kingdom’s finances after oil prices collapsed in the pandemic. Saudi Arabia, which had already cut government expenditures shortly after the price of oil crashed in March, is now tripling VAT to 15 percent from 5 percent beginning in July 2020, the Saudi Ministry of Finance said on Monday, as carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. In order to reduce government expenditures…