Abu Dhabi: The Saudi Citizen’s Account, a scheme meant to alleviate the impact of economic reforms on low and medium-income households, paid 1.8 billion riyals to 10.4 million eligible beneficiaries in October, Saudi media reported.
This payments bring the total amount paid to Saudi households to 82.3 billion riyals since the social security scheme launched in December 2017.
The official spokesman for the Citizen’s Account Programme, Sultan Al Qahtani, said 78 per cent of the beneficiaries received the payment in this batch, and the average payment for a single family was 1,063 riyals, while the number of heads of households was more than two million, constituting 90 per cent, while the number of dependents reached more than 8.1 million beneficiaries.
The number of independents eligible are more than 229,000 beneficiaries, constituting 10 per cent of the total number of beneficiaries, Al Qahtani said.
In 2017, the Saudi Cabinet approved the Citizen’s Account, a national cash transfer programme that aims to increase the efficiency of government benefits distribution by targeting the less fortunate in society.
It aims to ease the direct and indirect impact on low and medium income households resulting from the ongoing economic reforms such as the petrol price adjustment, the electricity tariffs adjustment, and value added tax (VAT) on all food and beverage items.
The criteria specify that beneficiaries must be citizens of Saudi Arabia (with the exception of the son or daughter of a citizen and non-Saudi spouses) and permanently residing in the country.
These payments differ depending on the size and income of each family. For example, the government estimated that a family of six with an income of about $2,320 (8,700 riyals) would receive monthly aid of 1,200 riyals.