Saudi Arabia: The Vision 2030 test

**Sameer Hashmi** (0:04)
Hello, and welcome to Business Daily on BBC World Service. I'm Sameer Hashmi in Riyadh.
Today, we are looking at the sweeping economic changes the kingdom has undergone since the launch of Vision 2030, nearly a decade ago, a reform drive aimed at reducing its dependence on oil.

**Ali Shahabi** (0:21)
Really, Vision 2030 was a strategy by the Crown Prince to put his chips on many numbers, with the idea that if a few numbers worked, that would diversify the economy.

**Sameer Hashmi** (0:32)
Some of those bets are now beginning to pay off, with a handful of sectors emerging as meaningful contributors to non-oil revenues.

**Ahmad Al-Khatib** (0:39)
Our target is 10% by 2030, which means we need to double the 5% in the next five years.

**Sameer Hashmi** (0:46)
But those gains are now being tested, as the Iran War adds a new layer of risk.

**Karen Young** (0:51)
I think we do have to prepare for a perhaps extended period of instability, unresolved sort of warm or lukewarm conflict within the region. So that makes it hard for everybody.

**Sameer Hashmi** (1:03)
That's all coming up on Business Daily from the BBC.
A young Saudi royal being welcomed on the world stage. It's August 2015 Muhammad Bin Salman has been appointed Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia at the age of 30 And this is one of his first overseas visits.
He's walking the red carpet in Amman, welcomed by Jordan's King Abdullah, a military band playing, royal guards standing to attention. At the time, few outside the region knew much about him. Within a few years, this young prince would become Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and the kingdom's de facto ruler. By the time he became Crown Prince in 2017, he had already pitched a confident economic vision for Saudi Arabia known as Vision 2030, an ambitious plan to transform the country's economy. In a television interview, he explained what he saw as Saudi Arabia's core economic problem.

**Muhammad Bin Salman** (2:21)
We have a case of addiction to oil in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the part of everyone.
That issue is serious. It disrupted the development of many sectors in the past years. Oil should be treated as an investment, nothing more, nothing less.

**Muhammad Bin Salman** (2:38)
And it should be owned as an investment, not as a main commodity or a main source of income.

**Sameer Hashmi** (2:44)
The diagnosis became the foundation of Vision 2030, an economic strategy to reduce Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil and reshape Saudi society itself. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter. When Vision 2030 was announced nearly a decade ago, oil accounted for nearly half of the economy.
Since then, the Kingdom has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into new sectors, from entertainment and tourism to sports and mining, as well as some of the world's most ambitious infrastructure projects.
Concerts, cinemas and global sporting events, once unthinkable, are now routine. Women who once faced tight social and economic restrictions are now driving, working and visible across public life. Saudi female labor force participation has more than doubled over the past decade, but only around a third of working-age women are currently active in the labor market. The non-oil economy has expanded sharply, but oil remains the backbone of the economy and the main source of funding for Vision 2030 itself. And despite progress on several fronts, the government has faced major challenges, including delays and scaling back of Neom, the trillion-dollar futuristic region in the desert that once sat at the heart of the diversification drive. So how should Vision 2030 be judged so far?

**Ali Shahabi** (4:02)
Well, I think people have ignored a lot of the sort of unglamorous but substantive work that has been done.

**Sameer Hashmi** (4:12)
Ali Shahabi is a Saudi analyst and a commentator and a member of Neom's advisory board.

**Ali Shahabi** (4:18)
First of all, the empowerment of women and the increase in women's participation in the workforce from 16 percent to 36 percent.
And that's what's supposed to happen by 2030 It happened by 2023 So women have exploded out really into the workforce. You see them yourself. They are all over the country. And that has had a huge knock on impact in terms of increasing the size of consumer wallets. There's been tremendous legal reform where the legal system has and it's ongoing, where the law is being codified, simplified, digitized to make it easier, not just for business people, but for the average person.
Really, Vision 2030 was a strategy by the Crown Prince to put his chips on many numbers, with the idea that if a few numbers worked, that would diversify the economy. And that is moving ahead. You still have chips on numbers, you have investments in the auto industry that are happening here. One will have to see whether that works or not. You have big investments being made in technology, in AI, in data centers.