DUBAI (Dow Jones)--Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Tuesday that depending on oil production and exports as a basis for national income and sustainable economic development isn't appropriate, and said that crude revenues should be used to create other sources of economic growth.

"One of the toughest and most important local challenges is the continuous dependence on oil for government revenues and for the national economy's components as a whole," Naimi said in a speech in the industrial city of Jubail, on the Persian Gulf coast.

"In light of such unpredictable fluctuations [in the oil market]...we should depend on oil revenues, products and various usages to create other sources of economic growth and prosperity on sound commercial basis," he said.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, said in December that its anticipated revenues would fall 36%, from 1.1 trillion Saudi riyals ($293.27 billion) for 2011 to SAR702 billion in 2012, as global oil prices and the kingdom's oil output are both expected to fall short of last year's levels.

The drop would make for a budget surplus of SAR12 billion in 2012, down from the SAR306 billion surplus that the Gulf's largest economy expects for 2011.

While Saudi Arabia is normally conservative in its projections of yearly oil revenues--in 2011, for example, revenues came in twice as high as projected--the budget outline released for 2012 shows what should be more realistic revenue figures for the coming year, economists said.