Saudi Arabia has announced the launch of “Delivery Plan 2020,” a privatization program headed by a newly created office, Saudi Arabia’s National Centre for Privatization (NCP), in a major milestone for the Kingdom as it looks to advance its Vision 2030 economic and social reform goals.
The plan sets out the country privatization agenda for the coming three years and outlines its hopes of raising $10bn in revenues for the government by 2020 through the sale of state assets. Saudi Arabia aims to generate 35 billion to 40 billion riyals ($9 billion to $11 billion) in non-oil revenues from the privatization program by 2020 and create up to 12,000 jobs, according to a document published by the official Saudi Press Agency obtained by Reuters.
The new organization is headed up by a younger, U.S.-educated Saudi economist, Turki Al-Hokail.
“The NCP went through 147 government entities, and looked at 120 initiatives – from privatization, PPP [public-private partnerships] to corporatization,” Al-Hokail said, according to MEED. “Following this – we have committed to five initiatives to privatize state assets, four projects to corporatize state entities and deliver 14 PPP projects by 2020.”
The privatization program is a major part of Vision 2030 because the delivery plan will get rid of the obstacles that limit opportunities for privatization.
According to Al-Hokail, the privatizations make take the form of IPOs, full or part sales.
