Domestic challenges of change amid transformation are not particular to the oil-producing nations of the Gulf. Neither is the concept of planning new in substance, although the degree of emphasis and the direction can be new. Saudi Arabia is today facing challenges more pressing than at any other time in its recent history; these range from demographic structures to structural economic imbalances, from the absence of key economic drivers for growth and employment to the critical importance of the role of the private sector as the “engine of growth.”
