Infrastructural spending in Saudi Arabia is expected to receive a major boost this year through allocations made in the 2013 national budget as well as additional funds allocated from the budget surplus of 2012, according to news reports.

The country, which has unveiled its largest budget in its history, has outlined revenues of SR829 billion ($221.02 billion) and an expenditure of SR820 billion ($218.62 billion), implying a surplus of SR9  billion ($2.4 billion) for the year, lower than the budgeted surplus of SR12 billion ($3.2 billion) for 2012.

The transport infrastructure projects in major cities across Saudi Arabia will be allocated SR200 billion ($53.32 billion) from the budget surplus of 2012, said an Arab News report citing the country’s finance minister Ibrahim Al Assaf.

With this allocation, the kingdom’s total spending in 2013 will rise to more than SR1 trillion ($266.6 billion), the Arab News reported. According to preliminary estimates, Saudi Arabia recorded a budget surplus of SR386 billion ($102.9 billion), or 14 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), in 2012; this was significantly higher than the budgeted estimate of SR12 billion ($3.2 billion) for the period.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia had announced its plan to modernise public transport systems in major cities such as Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Makkah.

The Arab News report said the design work on the Jeddah metro project is almost complete. The planned mass transit system in Jeddah includes a bus service using 816 buses to link metro stations with all the residential districts in the city. More than SR62 billion ($16.5 billion) has been allocated for Makkah’s mass transport system, including metro and bus networks. A metro project has also been planned for Riyadh, the report added.