Saudi Arabia is slowing plans to eliminate subsidies for a wide range of energy products – plans which are key to efforts to make the country use energy more efficiently – under a new long-term fiscal programme released with the 2018 state budget.

King Salman formally announced that the target date for eliminating the government’s budget deficit would be pushed back to 2023 from the original target of 2020, in order to reduce pressure on economic growth.

As a result, the new fiscal programme provides for domestic gasoline and diesel prices to be linked to international benchmark prices gradually between 2018 and 2025. Under the old programme, which was released last December, all energy products were to be linked to benchmarks by 2020.