Summary: Vision 2030 gets a thumbs up from the IMF, but the problems are vast.
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2 thoughts on “Saudi Arabia: Vision 2030 – first reports”
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Mohamed bin Salman is not the Crown Prince, albeit he does act as though that is the case. It is Mohamed bin Naif who holds the title Crown Prince.
A very rosy view from Saudi Gazette on the revenues that will accrue from religious tourism and green carding expats. Cherry picking professionals and allowing them the right to invest will generate $10 billion a year? That seems a figure plucked out of the sky. The vast majority of foreigners are poor migrants who send remittances back and tens of thousands of them are receiving no pay as the Saudi construction sector staggers from one crisis to the next; it is a situation that should be setting off louder alarm bells. A key to making MbS’s economic revolution work is meeting the urgent need to provide affordable housing for KSA’s huge youth population. But the construction sector that ought to be building the houses is in a mess for many reasons, the most obvious being the tens of billions of dollars worth of government funded projects summarily halted last year by MbS. He faces a huge challenge solving the conundrum of creating growth while simultaneously ramming through massive austerity cuts in an economy almost completely at the mercy of government spending. It is right that foreign money markets and ratings agencies remain sceptical about the deputy crown prince’s ability to pull off such a feat.
Here is my piece on the subject this week in The Saudi: http://www.thesaudi.info/en/2016/05/18/stormy-weather-ahead-saudi-banks-remain-strong/