Industrial cities to be home for 4IR as Saudi Arabia diversifies away from oil

Saudi Arabia will have an industrial base that will be compatible with all the requirements of the fourth industrial revolution as the Kingdom increases its efforts to move away from oil as a major source of income, according to the economy minister.

“I believe within two years, most of our industrial cities, if not all of them, will be 4IR (four industrial revolution) enabling,” Faisal Al-Ibrahim told Arab News on the sideline of the 6th edition of the FII in Riyadh.

“We established the center for the fourth industrial revolution because we acknowledge that this is a world or an area — industry 4.0 — that can help us leapfrog into that competitive export space.”

“Also, it can help us leverage the capacity of the youth and create high quality job opportunities for them,” he added.

Fourth industrial revolution, also referred to as 4IR or industry 4.0, is the new wave of industrialization worldwide where robotics, cloud computing, and sensors are used to enhance the productivity of manufacturing plants.

Saudi Arabia is racing with time to diversify its economy under the Vision 2030 plan.

“Our long-term economic challenge is to diversify our source of growth and Vision 2030 and everything you see here is for us to diversify our economy and to give it a stronger, more resilient structure.”

“We’re doing that through many initiatives, PIF’s activities, the policies that you’re seeing, the strategies that have been launched, the new sectors that have been launched, all drive at improving our diversification,” he added.

One good indication is non-oil activities in the last quarter of this year when non-oil activities grew at 8.2 percent, he said.

“And if you remove the net tax impact, it’s 6.1 percent. And that’s the fastest in 11 years, it’s still below our targets, and we still want to achieve more and do more,” he added.

“All the strategies you’re seeing, including the RDI priorities, research, development, innovation priorities, the industrial strategy, the recently announced Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative, all of these aim to help us have a wider, more diversified and more complex non-oil export base that help us decouple from one single commodity price, which is oil,” Al-Ibrahim said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the fastest growing economies in the G20 this year and Al-Ibrahim said that his ministry is focusing on enhancing the use of data to improve the position of the Kingdom’s within the group.

“Everything we’re doing under Vision 2030 is already advancing us in the G20. We’re talking about making sure that the data is competitive, the data environment, the data governance, and the data quality and availability is top tier in terms of G20, but also our institutional capabilities, our analytical rigor, the solutions we provide, and how we deliver these solutions, and how we measure the … and evaluate the outcomes, we want to be topnotch in G20 for sure,” he added.

Saudi Arabia will maintain its position as the fastest growing economy among the Group of 20 countries despite the turmoil caused by rising inflation and soaring interest rates, according to the International Monetary Fund.

In its latest report this month, the US-based organization fixed its forecast for the Saudi economy’s growth during 2022 at 7.6 percent — the same figure as in its April forecast.

Among Arab countries, the IMF expected that Iraq will be the fastest growing economy in 2022, with a 9.3 percent growth rate.