Vision 2030 is four years away. Here is the honest scorecard.

Vision 2030 was announced in April 2016.

Ten years down. Four years to go.

Depending on what you read, Saudi Arabia's transformation is either an extraordinary success or an expensive experiment that is starting to run into reality.

I don't think either description is particularly useful.

Saudi Arabia today is materially different from the country that launched Vision 2030 ten years ago. That is difficult to argue with.

But some of the easier wins have already been won.

The next phase asks a harder question.

Can the economic transformation increasingly sustain itself?

That is the part I am interested in as an investor.

Let's start with what has worked.

The original target was 100 million annual tourists by 2030.

Saudi Arabia passed it early.

The Kingdom recorded approximately 123 million domestic and international tourists in 2025, and the target has now been increased to 150 million by 2030.

That is not a target being massaged because it was missed. It is a target being raised because the original one was achieved years early.

Tourism has become one of the clearest examples of Vision 2030 turning an ambition into an actual economic sector.

Saudi home ownership has risen from 47% at the baseline to approximately 66% in 2025.

The 2030 target is 70%.

Four percentage points in four years looks achievable.

Again, real progress.

This one needs a little more nuance.

Non-oil activities now account for roughly 55% of the Saudi economy. But the official Vision 2030 KPI measures real non-oil GDP in absolute terms.

That stood at $892 billion on the report's measure in 2025, just below the $904 billion interim target.

The 2030 target is $1.325 trillion.

So I wouldn't describe diversification as either achieved or failing.

The Saudi economy is unquestionably less dependent on oil activity than it was ten years ago.

But there is still a sizeable amount of growth required between here and 2030.

Private-sector contribution to GDP reached 51% in 2025, ahead of the 47% interim target.

The 2030 target is 65%.

This may be one of the most important numbers in the entire Vision 2030 scorecard.

Because building things with government money is one challenge.

Building an economy where private capital increasingly does the building is another.

The first decade of Vision 2030 could rely heavily on the government and PIF to create industries, fund infrastructure and absorb risk.

That cannot be the permanent model.

At some point, private businesses need to invest because the returns make sense.

Foreign direct investment reached approximately 2.8% of GDP in 2025.

The interim target was 3.4%.

The 2030 target is 5.7%.

This matters for the same reason.

Saudi Arabia cannot fund every part of its transformation domestically. It needs foreign companies willing not simply to sell into the Kingdom, but to put capital at risk here.

There has been real progress. More than 700 international companies have established regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia and FDI inflows have increased significantly.

But 2.8% against a 5.7% destination tells you there is still a lot of work to do.

This is where the conversation gets much more complicated.

Some of the original timelines will not be met.

Projects have been resized, delayed or reprioritised. NEOM has been re-sequenced. Other major PIF developments are being reassessed as Saudi Arabia balances competing commitments.

That matters.

If a project was originally expected to be delivered by a certain date and it isn't, we shouldn't pretend the original expectation never existed.

But I also don't think resizing a project automatically means Vision 2030 is failing.

The more interesting question is why the prioritisation is happening now.

Capital has a cost.

PIF has competing demands.

Government budgets have limits.

Private investors require returns.

And Saudi Arabia has several major commitments approaching at roughly the same time, including Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup.

You cannot treat every project as equally urgent forever.

In fact, PIF's own 2026–2030 strategy describes the next phase as moving from rapid growth and acceleration towards sustained value creation, greater investment efficiency and stronger private-sector participation.

That language matters.

The era of simply deploying capital is giving way to something harder.

Capital discipline.

I did not build my Saudi portfolio around Vision 2030.

I built it primarily around dividend income from businesses I thought I could hold for years.

And I think that distinction is important.

I don't want to own a company simply because somebody can draw a line between it and Vision 2030.

You can probably do that with almost every large company on Tadawul.

I want businesses that already generate cash and have Vision 2030 as a tailwind.

I don't want the investment case to require government spending to continue indefinitely.

Looking back at the portfolio through that lens is interesting.

Banks are one of the clearest picks-and-shovels plays on the transformation.

Housing needs mortgages.

Companies need credit.

Infrastructure needs financing.

Consumers need banking products.

And an economy trying to increase private-sector investment from here to 2030 is going to require a lot of capital.

That runs through the banking system.

Al Rajhi and SNB therefore give me exposure to Vision 2030 without requiring me to predict whether a particular hotel, airline, entertainment project or new city succeeds.

But there is a risk on the other side.

If investment slows materially, credit growth can slow with it.

The banks benefit from the scale of the transformation.

They are not immune to its capital constraints.

I wrote an entire issue recently about STC, so I won't repeat it all here.

But STC may be the clearest example in my portfolio of a business that can benefit from Vision 2030 without depending on one megaproject.

5G.

Cloud.

Digital government.

Enterprise technology.

AI infrastructure through Center3.

Digital banking.

And now the SAR32.64 billion government contract signed in January.

Whatever the final shape of Vision 2030 looks like, Saudi Arabia is going to be more digital in 2030 than it was in 2016.

STC sits underneath a lot of that infrastructure.

The question, as I wrote previously, is how much capital it will take to build it and what returns STC ultimately earns on that capital.

I actually don't think Jarir should be called a Vision 2030 stock.

And that is part of why I like it.

There is no gigaproject required for someone to buy a laptop.

Jarir's exposure is more indirect.

Saudi Arabia has a young population. Employment has expanded. Education, digitisation and household consumption all sit underneath the broader transformation of the economy.

Jarir sells into that.

Electronics. Computers. Gaming. Books. Stationery.

I don't need Vision 2030 spending to appear directly in Jarir's revenue line.

I need Saudi consumers to keep earning and spending.

That is a very different investment proposition.

Aramco is the contradiction sitting at the centre of Vision 2030.

Saudi Arabia is trying to build an economy that is less dependent on oil.

Oil is helping pay for it.

Aramco dividends contribute to government and PIF resources that can ultimately be deployed elsewhere in the economy.

So I don't think of Aramco as a Vision 2030 diversification play.

Aramco is not the diversification story. It is one of the engines paying for it.

That distinction matters.

Some of the sectors most closely associated with Vision 2030 barely appear in my portfolio.

Tourism.

Real estate development.

Entertainment.

Renewables.

And until recently, mining.

That isn't because I think those sectors will fail.

Some may become enormous.

It is because a sector being strategically important does not automatically make every company operating in it a good investment.

I bought Dar Al Arkan earlier this year and exited it.

The income framework didn't fit what I wanted from the position.

Mining is more interesting to me, particularly as Saudi Arabia tries to turn its estimated mineral resources into a genuine third economic pillar alongside oil and petrochemicals.

But the same rule applies.

Vision 2030 adjacency is not an investment thesis.

Eventually I need earnings, cash flow and a price that makes sense.

Vision 2030 has already changed Saudi Arabia. I don't think that is seriously debatable anymore.

Tourism looks different.

The labour market looks different.

Home ownership looks different.

The private sector is larger.

The non-oil economy is larger.

Entire industries exist today that barely existed when the programme was announced. But I think the next four years will be harder than the previous ten.

Because the question is changing.

The state can build an airport. Eventually the airport needs passengers.

The state can fund a tourism destination. Eventually the hotels need occupancy.

PIF can capitalise a company. Eventually that company needs to generate its own cash.

Government can seed an industry. Eventually private investors need to believe the return justifies the risk.

That is the next phase.

Not simply:

What can Saudi Arabia build?

But:

What deserves the next riyal of capital?

Which projects get funded?

Which get delayed?

Which companies become self-funding?

Which attract foreign capital?

Which generate acceptable returns without requiring another government cheque?

For me as an investor, that changes what I want to own. I don't want a company simply because it is adjacent to Vision 2030.

I want companies that already generate cash, pay me while I wait, and have Vision 2030 as a tailwind rather than a life-support system.

That is the distinction I will increasingly be looking for over the next four years.

Next issue: Three numbers. That is all I look at when Aramco, Al Rajhi or SNB reports results. Revenue and profit get the headlines.

I want to show you the three numbers that tell me whether I should keep holding.

Sources: Saudi Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025; Saudi Press Agency; GASTAT; IMF 2026 Article IV Consultation; PIF 2026–2030 Strategy; Saudi Exchange/company filings.

The Quiet Compounder is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a licensed advisor before making investment decisions.