Could Vision 2030 be all ‘smoke and mirrors?’ Saudi Arabia appears committed to its recently-announced long-term economic plan, dubbed Vision 2030, which aims to remove the country’s economic dependence on oil exports within the next several decades. The removal of Ali al-Naimi, who for twenty-five years acted as the Kingdom’s oil minister and engineered the production surge guiding Saudi policy since November 2014, is a further indication of the government’s determination to make a major economic course correction.
But can they do it?
Oil covers 70 percent of government revenue, while the oil industry is a major employer for the Saudi workforce. The immediate reaction to the plan, announced on April 25 by Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman, was guarded optimism. Recently there has been much more skepticism, with some doubting how Saudi Arabia could accomplish all that it has planned for itself.
Prince Salman, who at 30 is both a powerful member of the royal family and a standard-bearer for a new generation of Saudi leaders, emphasized in his announcement that Saudi Arabia would begin its transition to an ‘oil-less’ economy through an IPO of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company.
This post was published at Wolf Street on May 11, 2016.
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