On 18 October, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman launched the National Industrial Strategy (NIS), a comprehensive roadmap that contributes to accelerating and diversifying the Kingdom’s industrial development. The industrial sector is the main driver for increasing non-oil exports, attracting foreign investments, investing in research, development, and innovation, and creating high-value jobs.
Industrial Development Journey
The NIS aims to build an agile and competitive sustainable private sector led by an industrial economy. The strategy drives the Kingdom’s focus towards 118 prioritised segments selected according to strategic foundations within 12 priority industrial sub-sectors in which the Kingdom has opportunities to compete at the regional and global levels.
Strategic Objectives
the NIS is based on three strategic objectives:
- Build national industrial resilience by developing know-how and manufacturing capabilities to address the uncertainty of global changes and maximise resiliency in emergencies, such as pandemics or environmental disasters.
- Become an integrated regional manufacturing hub by taking advantage of the size of the local and regional markets through an economic integration model in value chains and related products to create a competitive ability.
- Expand global leadership in selected segments by adopting a set of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and focusing on research, development, and innovation
Enabling Objectives
Furthermore, the NIS identified 15 enablers regarding the industrial environment, which were included within four enabling objectives:
- Build world-class supply chains through high productivity, advanced manufacturing, and cost-competitive flow of goods and services.
- Grow the industrial business base by improving the legislative and financing environment, raising the participation of industrial SMEs, and increasing the participation of the industrial sector in the local content.
- Unlock KSA international trade by Opening new international horizons to industrial investors and enabling exports towards achieving a prosperous economy.
- Cultivate innovation and know-how through developing, attracting, and retaining talent, as well as developing an innovation culture to help the industrial sector reach its most sophisticated state.
Economic Impact
Accordingly, the implementation of NIS will have a huge impact on the Kingdom’s economy and industrial sector, achieving the following objectives by 2030:
- Annual GDP exceeding 895 billion Saudi riyals (USD 238 billion) – an increase of 2.7 times in 2030 and 4.3 times in 2035 compared to 2020 levels.
- Creating nearly 2.1 million direct and indirect industrial jobs – an increase of 2.3 times in 2030 and 3.7 times in 2035 compared to 2020 levels.
- Annual manufacturing goods exports exceeding 557 billion Saudi riyals (USD 148 billion) – an increase reaching 3 times in 2030 and 5.3 times in 2035 compared to 2020 levels.
Implementing this ambitious strategy requires an integrated, flexible, and appropriate governance model for the industrial sector that is designed to empower industrial investors and supported by a well-defined implementation plan that contributes to the launch of local manufacturing capabilities.
The strategy aims to include more than 136 initiatives, including policies and regulations among the initiatives mentioned above. Hence, Access Partnership closely monitors developments regarding the KSA industrial sector and the upcoming policies and regulations of industrial segments. For more information regarding the regulations or engagement in Saudi Arabia, please contact Rati Kvantaliani at [email protected]
