Government has stepped up efforts to tackle oil price fallout Some economists forecasting economic contraction this year The first year of Saudi Arabia’s drive to reduce its oil dependence may end with the opposite result. A flurry of cost-cutting measures will likely push the non-oil economy into recession, analysts say. That means that any overall growth in 2016 will be largely due to record crude output. Efforts to manage the fallout from cheap oil gathered steam over the past two weeks. Policy makers have suspended bonuses and trimmed allowances for government employees. Ministers’ salaries were cut by 20 percent. The central bank also said it’s injecting about 20 billion riyals ($5.3 billion) into the banking system to ease a cash crunch. Austerity will help Saudis reduce a budget deficit that reached 16 percent of gross domestic product last year. But it will also likely exacerbate the economic slowdown as […]