Dubai: Whether the National Transformation Programme, details of which were announced late Sunday night, is achievable, has become a constant subject of conversation in the kingdom. On Monday, the first day of Ramadan, the annual satirical television show “Selfie,” which runs during the fasting month, lampooned the preoccupation with the plan.
It showed a vision of Saudi Arabia 100 years in the future, with a widely lamented shortage of adequate housing persisting and women still barred from using cars alone — even in self-driving cars.
While some of the targets, such as cutting lavish energy subsidies, have been applauded by economists as long overdue, others, such as a goal of ending dependence on oil by 2020, have provoked widespread scepticism.
A focus on the private sector to deliver new revenue streams and help boost employment has raised concerns that measures such as deregulation and privatisation will fail to help companies compensate for a fall in state spending.
The government aims to accelerate privatisation. Details in Monday’s plan showed the Energy Ministry aimed to transfer all its power generation to “strategic partners” by 2020. Riyadh will also privatise its water desalination agency, it said.
The plans have alarmed some social conservatives, who regard proposals to increase the number of women working and create more opportunities for entertainment in a country where cinemas are banned as risking a betrayal of Islamic values.
Managing such contradictory impulses will be a tough task for Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, the architect of the reforms, who has risen from near obscurity before his father became king early last year to a position of almost unprecedented power in the kingdom.
He was named head of the new Council for Economic and Development Affairs, a supercommittee tasked with overseeing long-term structural changes in Saudi Arabia’s domestic policy.
