The Cabinet of Saudi Arabia kingdom has approved the Vision 2030, a broad-based economic reform plan. The Vision charts out the roadmap for diversifying the Saudi economy in next 14 years and to ensure that Saudi Arabia can live without oil by 2020.

• Vision 2030 envisages forming public investment fund, boosting affordable housing and giving expats long-term residence among others.
• The project, which includes plans to float a stake in the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, and set up one of the world’s biggest government investment funds, is meant to provide a blueprint for sweeping reforms to steer the OPEC kingdom away from its decades-long reliance on cheap-to-produce oil.
• Beyond selling state assets, it includes trimming government perks, like the estimated $61 billion spent annually on energy subsidies that Saudi citizens have become accustomed to and which have helped secure political patronage for the Al Saud ruling family.
• Lower oil prices pushed Saudi Arabia into a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion last year and a projected deficit this year of $87 billion. Despite efforts to limit reliance on its main export, oil accounted for more than 70 percent of the state’s revenue in 2015.
• Vision 2030 sets out a goal of localizing more than half of Saudi Arabia’s military spending and creating a military industries holding company that would be initially fully owned by the government.