Saudi Arabia enforces new financial control law across public sector

New rules bring digital and self-audit systems into public finance oversight

Last updated:
Nivetha Dayanand, Assistant Business Editor
The Riyadh skyline
The Riyadh skyline
SPA

Dubai: Saudi Arabia has brought its Financial Control Law into force, marking a step toward strengthening oversight across government entities and aligning public finance management with Vision 2030 objectives.

The law, issued under a Council of Ministers resolution, replaces the previous Financial Representatives Law and introduces a broader framework designed to improve efficiency and accountability in how public funds are monitored.

Alongside the rollout, the Ministry of Finance has issued implementing regulations that set out how the new system will be applied across ministries, agencies and state-linked entities.

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Wider scope across government

The law applies to all entities funded through the Saudi budget, as well as those receiving government support, grants or subsidies. It also covers organisations that carry out procurement or project work on behalf of government bodies.

This wider scope brings more activities under a unified oversight structure, covering both direct spending and outsourced operations linked to public funds.

Multiple layers of oversight

The framework introduces a mix of control approaches tailored to different types of entities and operations. These include direct control mechanisms, internal self-audit processes, digital monitoring tools and report-based reviews.

The approach is designed to match oversight intensity with the scale and nature of each entity’s activities, while aligning with international practices in financial supervision.

Nivetha Dayanand
Nivetha DayanandAssistant Business Editor
Nivetha Dayanand is Assistant Business Editor at Gulf News, covering aviation, financial markets and commodities. A business and financial journalist with a strong interest in multimedia storytelling, she regularly takes complex financial and economic subjects beyond the written word, producing explainer videos that make them easier for a wider audience to understand. Nivetha has interviewed senior policymakers, business leaders and global financial figures both on and off camera. Her past guests include UAE Minister of Economy and Tourism Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud, a member of the House of Saud and the founder and CEO of KBW Ventures, Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund and Indian ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and N. Chandrababu Naidu. She has also hosted and moderated panels, conferences and awards shows, bringing her newsroom experience to live conversations on business, finance and the economy. An Erasmus Mundus journalism alum, Nivetha is drawn to stories that affect people directly and to reporting that gives a platform to voices that might otherwise go unheard. She was among the first journalists to speak to Petrofac employees in the UAE about unpaid salaries, broke the news of the planned demolition of Dubai’s well-known “Toyota Building”, and helped set the record straight on widely circulated claims that a giant replica of the Moon was coming to Dubai. More recently, her exclusive interview with EDGE Group CEO Hamad Al Marar revealed how the UAE-based defence group deployed its systems along the country’s shore border and established a geofence around the UAE within 48 hours of the February 28 escalation. Prior to joining Gulf News, Nivetha worked at ITP Media, where she helped launch Finance Middle East, a new publication covering the region’s financial sector. Her role spanned reporting and editing, video production, interviews and events. Across print, digital, and video, she focuses on finding the people behind business stories and explaining why those stories matter to the audience reading or watching them.

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