Saudi Arabia answers questions on its transformation

A senior source in Saudi Arabia’s Council of Economic and Development Affairs, a body overseen by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, responded to questions from the Bloomberg news agency on the government’s 2017 agenda with the statement that follows. Questions have been edited for clarity.
This will be a key year for Prince Mohammed’s plan for life after oil, Saudi Vision 2030. How do you respond to those concerned that the to-do list for 2017 is too crowded?
Firstly, I would like to make it clear that the to-do list is ambitious but not impossible and we have already begun applying it. Our work has started, in the beginning of 2016, with the formulation of our future vision for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s position and our approach until 2030 and applying it realistically, clearly, ambitiously and decisively by the identification of challenges and visions.
Since the announcement of the Vision, we have started the actual implementation of several courses, including promoting the government performance by forming a specialised council in the field of economy and development, integrating some ministries, creating new executive government agencies and creating executive programmes to achieve the objectives of Saudi "Vision 2030".
With the launching of Vision 2030, several programmes, such as National Transformation Program 2020, Fiscal Balance Program 2020, bonds issuing, paying the delayed full dues to the private sector, Citizen’s Account Program, Parallel Financial Market, General Entertainment Authority and activities directed to the citizens have been launched.
These are some examples of the success stories we have. These successes are directly contributing to achieving the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030. Thanks to God, Saudi Arabia has social, economic, political and geographic abilities to achieve the Vision.
How will the government shift from talk to action in 2017?
As I mentioned in the previous answer, the government is working in several avenues that contribute to implementing the plans and achieving the objectives, including paying the delayed full dues to the private sector, creating the Small and Medium Enterprises Authority and providing financial funds to support this sector – in addition to allocating many opportunities to enable the partnership between both public and private sectors. In 2017, four variety allocation opportunities in the Saudi market will be offered for private sector, locally and globally.
How will the government ensure that the Citizen’s Account, the new cash payout programme for Saudis, is implemented without mistakes?
Citizen’s Account Program is a national programme that aims to change the method of offering the government subsidies to be directed to low- and average-income groups rather than being comprehensive support. This programme will cover all kinds of government subsidies in the future, not only gasoline, electricity and high-cost living allowances.
I recall that on December 22, we announced the Citizen’s Account programme. We also announced that registering for the programme would start in February 1st of 2017, which was accomplished, thanks to God. Until now, more than three million Saudi families including 11 million male and female citizens have registered in the programme. This means that more than half of Saudi society has registered in less than 30 days and about five million male and female citizens registered in the first week easily and without any difficulties or technical malfunctions with high reliability.
In the kingdom, we also successfully established similar support programmes in an electronic format such as Hafiz (a programme meant to support job seekers) and social security and protection programmes. This has acquired the kingdom an experience in management of these programmes that draws on advanced technical infrastructure that we own and the electronic connectivity between more than 18 different government bodies. It should also be noted that more than 80 per cent of the registrations were done via mobile phones.

Source: The National