The Citizen's Account Program in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

is a cash transfer program that started in December 2017. The program is adopted and implemented by The Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Through the programme, citizens in Saudi Arabia get monthly payments from the state. Saudi Arabia is doing many reforms to reduce the country's dependency on oil revenues, but many of these reforms have overburdened some citizens. The Citizen's Account, which is a form of

basic income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to perform Work (hu ...

, is designed to balance this up, to avoid burdening lower income families which would otherwise occur despite higher prices for oil, fuel and energy. This financial support comes as a response to the increase the costs of electricity and petrol as well as the imposing of

VAT A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...

on many products. In December 2017, immediately before the programme began, more than 3.7 million households had registered, representing 13 million people, or more than half the population. , between 1/5 and 1/3 of Saudi residents are estimated to be non-citizens.Saudi Arabia
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''.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. As of March 2021, the programme has officially paid out over £400,000,000.

Program objectives

* Developing the services given to citizens * Improving the government's expenditure and operation efficiency * Providing assistance to citizens with a high level of transparency and efficiency

References

Universal basic income 2017 establishments in Saudi Arabia {{Saudi-stub

Program objectives

See also

References