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The government statistics authority announced that the consumer price index in Saudi Arabia rose 5.8% last October, compared to the same month of 2019, on the back of rising food prices. food and the application of value added tax.
Data released on Sunday shows that inflation rose on food and beverage prices by 13% last October, down from less than 1% last September.
Tobacco and cigarette prices also increased, by 13.2 percent, and restaurant and transport prices rose by more than 7 percent each.
The authority attributed the market basket increases in October to an increase in the value-added tax, which ranges between 5 and 15 percent.
Among the foodstuffs that saw their prices increase were vegetables, which rose by more than 22 percent, followed by meat and poultry prices by more than 14 percent.
The authority is based on the prices of goods and services in a basket of 490 items.
Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s largest economy, has been able to fund huge projects and spending without any tax for decades, but the collapse in oil prices from 2014 forced it to switch strategy, according to Agence France-Presse.
And the collection of value-added tax began in 2018 against a backdrop of continued shortfalls in annual budgets in the period following the collapse in crude prices, and other taxes, including additional residence fees. , were imposed on foreigners.
The International Monetary Fund expects the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, to contract 6.8% this year, in its worst performance since the 1980s.
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