The pace of Saudi Arabia’s austerity drive will likely ease in 2017, a senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said, helping the Kingdom’s economy recover after a sharp slowdown this year. "Next year we see a little bit of an improvement compared to this year, in part because the big consolidation would be a little easier," Masood Ahmed, the IMF Middle East chief, said in an interview in Dubai. The fund expects non-oil GDP to expand 2.6% in 2017. Overall, growth will be 2%. The forecast did not include the impact of the government’s recent decision to freeze bonuses for state employees and cut the salaries of ministers by 20% in the Islamic year starting in October. The measures may be a “further downward drag on growth,’’ Ahmed said. "This kind of transformation is never easy," Ahmed said. "It takes some time to implement and I can see that a year into it people are still adjusting to it in a varying degrees." The IMF expects the budget deficit to narrow to 9.5% of GDP in 2017 from 13% this year. A projected improvement in oil prices would have an impact on the economy “next year more than this year,” Ahmed said. (Bloomberg)