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CONTRIBUTORS

Salah Shamma

Head of Investment MENA Equity

Executive summary

Ten years into Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has moved from a narrowly defined oil story to a more diversified, though still state-led, investment case. Non-oil gross domestic product (GDP) now accounts for more than half of real output, female labour force participation has increased, and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) has grown to a near US$1-trillion sovereign wealth investor anchoring domestic transformation.

Exhibit 1: Saudi Arabia GDP Growth and Non–Oil Share

Source: Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025.

Yet the pace of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows, fiscal dynamics, and giga-project delivery has prompted a pragmatic recalibration of early ambitions. The next phase of Vision 2030 is defined less by landmark real estate and more by high-return strategic infrastructure in AI and data centres, renewable energy and mining. All underpinned by an upgraded sovereign credit profile and deeper equity and sukuk markets.

For investors, the central question is no longer whether Vision 2030 ‘works’, but how this recalibrated opportunity set should be sized within global emerging market (EM) portfolios.

Vision 2030: passing the halfway marker

Vision 2030 has delivered measurable structural change. In 2025 non-oil GDP grew 4.9%, accounting for more than half of real GDP. FDI inflows reached USD35 billion in the same year, the highest on record, and PIF assets under management grew to US$941 billion.1 The private sector’s contribution to GDP grew to 51%, exceeding the 2025 target, female labour force participation, once a structural constraint, has increased to 36%, also exceeding the target.2 The Kingdom’s 2025 annual report confirms that 93% of Vision Realization Programs are fully or close to achieving their targets.

As Vision 2030 moves from aspirations and targets to delivery and monetisation, the opportunity set is broadening. It is moving beyond banks and petrochemicals toward companies with clearer exposure to domestic demand, infrastructure, capital markets and productivity-led growth. For EM investors, the key question is how much of this transition is already reflected in asset values, and where it still offers relative value to Saudi’s next phase of growth.

In this paper, we evaluate the following:

  1. The 10-year macro arc
  2. Where progress is strongest
  3. Works in progress
  4. Vision 2030 enters its second decade
  5. Current state and resilience
  6. Equity and debt market lens
  7. Outlook and next steps

For institutional allocators, the strategic case for Saudi Arabia remains constructive: above-EM-average sovereign credit quality, an increasingly accessible and deepening equity market, the largest sukuk market in the GCC, a labour market reform track record, and an infrastructure plan that emphasises execution. The tactical case will be conflict-dependent and data-driven. The technical case, benchmark weights, passive flows and index inclusions are supportive.

Saudi Arabia has earned a place among the core considerations for EM portfolios, not as a speculative petro-state play, but as a diversified EM economy in the middle of the second phase of reform.

Endnotes

  1. Source: 2024 data.
  2. Source: GASTAT. As of March 2026.

 

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