Saudi Arabia: The wake-up call - FT.com:
"Inside the sprawling royal court in Riyadh, a team of technocrats is putting the final touches to plans for a drastic overhaul of the Saudi Arabian economy. Backed by an army of highly paid western consultants, the royal aides have identified billions of dollars of waste and government largesse that the desert kingdom can no longer afford.
Ten months after acceding to the throne, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, 79, faces the daunting challenge of managing a new era in Saudi Arabia. The world’s largest oil producer and longstanding US ally has adopted a policy that protects its market share rather than the price, which has more than halved since June 2014. But while the effect has been cushioned by $640bn in foreign-exchange reserves, the age of $100-a-barrel oil has receded and budget surpluses have been replaced by yawning deficits.
“The collapse in oil prices is a wake-up call,” says an official in Riyadh. “We’ve had a long history of bad practices because of our overreliance on oil.”"
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