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State media denies public sector wage cut rumours

SAUDI Arabia is not planning to cut public salaries, wages and allowances, state-run media reported on Sunday.

The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted an unnamed Finance Ministry official dismissing rumours that the government planned to cut wages in the face of a $39 billion (£25bn) deficit.

The official dismissed allegations of a U-turn, insisting neither Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf nor his officials had made such statements.

But an official statement carried on SPA in English on Thursday had said clearly that there would be “more efforts to reduce current expenditures, especially expenses of salaries, wages, allowances and the like, which represent nearly 50 per cent of the approved budget expenditures” for 2015.

A hashtag on Twitter about reducing wages has since attracted thousands of tweets.

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