https://arab.news/6nqxb
- Approved annual budget is part of the UAE’s multi-year financial plan for the years 2022-2026
- Almost 40% of the 2025 budget will be allocated to social development and pensions
ABU DHABI: The UAE cabinet has approved a balanced budget for the 2025 fiscal year with expenditures rising to 71.5 billion dirhams ($19.47 billion), state news agency WAM said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Gulf state, one of the world’s top oil exporters, projects an increase in spending of almost 12 percent next year from 2024 estimates, but still expects a balanced budget in 2025, since revenue is also budgeted at 71.5 billion dirhams, according to the statement.
The approved annual budget is part of the UAE’s multi-year financial plan for the years 2022-2026. The country approved a$52.3 billion budget for 2024-26 last October.
The UAE is a federation of seven emirates, all of which can set individual budgets, in addition to a federal budget. A large focus of the federal budget is on social and welfare spending.
Almost 40 percent of the 2025 budget will be allocated to social development and pensions, with education accounting for the majority of spending in that sector, followed by health care.
More than 35 percent of the spending is for government affairs, with much smaller allocations for the Infrastructure and Economic Affairs sector and for the Financial Investments sector, the statement said.