In the 4th quarter of 2022, Saudi Arabia’s non-oil sector grew at the fastest pace in more than a year and “helped the kingdom record the fastest overall growth among major global economies,” Bloomberg reports.
The non-oil economy grew an annual 6.2% during the fourth quarter of last year, the highest level since the third quarter of 2021, flash estimates from the General Authority for Statistics and published by Bloomberg showed.
The oil economy in Saudi Arabia rose 6.1% during the same period.
Overall growth for Saudi Arabia was an estimated 8.7% last year, compared to 3.2% in 2021. That growth was still largely driven by the oil economy, which saw 15.4%.
But the increase in non-oil economic growth will likely be welcomed by Saudi authorities as progress. Developing the Kingdom’s non-oil economy is the main overall economic goal of Vision 2030, announced in 2016. The government of Saudi Arabia is working to diversify the Kingdom’s economic reliance on oil prices for growth by strategically developing nascent sectors in the Kingdom with major investments.
