Saudi OKs payouts to ease price-rise effects
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has authorized a range of bonuses and payouts for citizens, including a monthly payment of $267 for civil servants for this year, just days after a new tax was introduced and subsidies for gasoline were reduced.
The government said the measures are meant to “ease the burdens” of price increases on citizens as the state works to restructure its economy in a time of lower oil prices.
In a series of royal decrees issued overnight Saturday, the king ordered a $1,333 payout to military personnel serving on the front lines of the kingdom’s war with Yemen, as well as a $133 allowance for one year for retirees and those receiving social security.
Students’ monthly stipends will be boosted this year, and the government will bear the cost of the new tax for some services and for the purchase of a first home valued at up to $226,600. The king also ordered that government salaries be paid before electricity bills are issued each month.
On Monday, the government introduced a 5 percent value-added tax on goods and services, raised the price of electricity and reduced subsidies on gasoline, nearly doubling the price at the pump.
The government recently instituted a welfare system reaching approximately 3 million families and 10.6 million beneficiaries — roughly half the Saudi population. Half of those families received the maximum payment of $250. The minimum payment is $80. The government expects to spend approximately $8.5 billion on Citizen’s Account payments in 2018.
Saud al-Qahtani, an adviser to the royal court, said on his Twitter account that the handouts will cost the state more than $13.3 billion.
Working-class Saudis aren’t the only ones affected by subsidy reductions. In an emailed statement, Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb, Saudi Arabia’s attorney general, said 11 princes were arrested over the nonpayment of their electricity and water bills.
The princes had gathered at the royal palace to protest a decree that ordered the state to stop paying their utility bills, and security services arrested them after they refused to leave, Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper reported Saturday.
“Any person, regardless of their status or position, will be held accountable should they decide not to follow the rules and regulations of the state,” al-Mojeb said.
The attorney general said the princes were also seeking compensation for the 2016 execution of one of their cousins, who had been convicted of killing a man.
The 11 princes will be held at the al-Ha’er prison south of Riyadh until their trial. The maximum-security prison holds many of Saudi Arabia’s Islamic militants who have fought abroad.
In November, authorities swept up dozens of Saudi Arabia’s richest and most influential people, including princes and government ministers, and detained them at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh. Information for this article was contributed by Abdullah al-Shihri and Aya Batrawy of The Associated Press and by Sarah Algethami, Mahmoud Habboush, Kenneth Pringle and Ros Krasny of Bloomberg News.