The Council of Economic and Development Affairs, during its meeting yesterday at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, chaired by HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Crown Prince, Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Chairman of the Council of Economic Affairs and Development, took a package of solutions and measures to settle the private sector's dues to the state treasury that were delayed in light of the sharp decline in oil revenues and the accompanying measures taken by the state to review spending on a number of projects and reprioritize spending according to impact and efficiency and the implementation of these measures
The Council authorized His Royal Highness the Chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs to submit these solutions and procedures to the Supreme Council, so that the settlement of these dues is immediately initiated and completed before the end of the current fiscal year, which ends at the end of December 2016.
The Council also discussed the mechanisms of disbursement of these dues based on prioritizing disbursement and achieving transparency by launching an electronic platform to automate the procedures of disbursement of dues and ensure the highest degree of transparency, so that this platform represents a tool to provide accurate information about public expenditures.
The Council had reviewed the reports of public authorities and the reports of the Expenditure Efficiency Office on the measures taken to raise the level of efficiency of government spending, including the orders and decisions issued to restructure some government sectors, and the measures taken at the end of the last fiscal year and the beginning of the current fiscal year to review the amounts approved for a number of projects and align them with development priorities and needs and efficiency standards in spending, which included reviewing hundreds of contracts by rescheduling the implementation of some of them and amending contractual formulas and technical specifications for others in accordance with legal controls and legitimacy.
