The Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Hamad Al-Sayyari, brought us some good news. He told us that public finances had significantly improved in 2003; in 2002 there was a surplus of SR36 billion instead of a deficit of SR20.5 billion. In SAMA’s annual report released last month, the governor attributed the surplus to a curb in public expenditures and an improvement in revenues, including non-oil ones.

The report did not tell us, however, what had become of the extra money although the report appeared some 10 months after the surplus was in fact achieved. At the end of the 2003 fiscal year, the minister of finance presented us with the good news that there was a huge budgetary surplus of SR48 billion — a figure different from the one in the SAMA report. Neither the governor nor the minister has said the surplus would be used to ease the public debt. Nor did either tell us how the money had been spent.

If we find an excuse for the minister who spoke earlier when things were perhaps not clear, what excuse can we find for the governor whose report appeared 10 months after the surplus found its way into the state coffers? The minister was speaking on television but the governor was presenting an official report which was supposed to be both comprehensive and precise.

Instructions by authorities explicitly state that any budget surplus should be used to reduce the public debt. Following the minister’s statement, I wrote calling for the Ministry of Finance to specify where the extra money would go. There has been no response. I was overjoyed going over the SAMA report and seeing so huge a surplus in the budget. My happiness, however, was short-lived and my joy became disappointment when I found no reference in the report to what had happened to the surplus or even what the ministry planned to do with the money.

I hope the matter of how the surplus was to be spent was indeed in the report and that some kind of unavoidable computer glitch prevented this important section from appearing in the copy sent to the press. If this is the case, then the governor should act to rectify the situation and inform the public. If, on the other hand, there was no reference whatsoever to the matter in the original report, then we are facing a serious discrepancy in our financial system. In this case also, the public should be informed.

Frankly, I feel that both the Ministry of Finance and SAMA are determined to shroud the matter in secrecy by ordering a complete media blackout on the budget surplus.