SAR 142.6 billion: that is how much the Saudi treasury collected from non-oil sources in the third quarter of 2026, up 20 percent on the same quarter last year and equal to 55 percent of all government revenue. The figure stands out in the latest quarterly report from the Ministry of Finance, published on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, which puts the quarter's deficit at SAR 84.3 billion, slightly below the SAR 88.5 billion recorded in the third quarter of 2025.
Total revenue for July to September came to SAR 259.1 billion, 4 percent lower than a year earlier, as oil income fell 23 percent to SAR 116.5 billion from SAR 150.8 billion. Spending declined by a similar 4 percent to SAR 343.4 billion. Employee compensation remained the largest item at about SAR 140.3 billion, followed by goods and services at SAR 67.5 billion and capital spending at roughly SAR 48 billion.
Within non-oil income, other revenues jumped 68 percent to SAR 49.1 billion, taxes on income, profits and capital gains rose 16 percent to SAR 7.7 billion, and taxes on goods and services edged up 1 percent to SAR 75.2 billion.
For the first nine months of the year, revenue reached SAR 858.9 billion, up 3 percent, while spending climbed 8 percent to SAR 1.10 trillion. That leaves a cumulative deficit of SAR 244.3 billion, against a full-year deficit of SAR 165.4 billion projected in the 2026 budget.
The government financed the entire third-quarter gap through borrowing and made no drawdown from its reserves, which stood at SAR 399.5 billion at the end of the period. Public debt reached SAR 1.77 trillion at the end of September, made up of SAR 1.14 trillion in domestic debt and SAR 637.6 billion in external debt, compared with about SAR 1.52 trillion at the start of the year.
Source: Ministry of Finance, Arab News
