On 31st December, the Saudi Arabia National Debt Management center announced that it had completed the process of arranging a $13 billion, seven-year syndicated loan to fund power, water, and public utility projects.

This transaction is a component of the medium-term debt strategy of the ⁠kingdom, which seeks to diversify the sources of funding and fulfill the financing requirements in the medium to long term.

The center clarified in a statement that this transaction will seek to capitalize on market opportunities to carry out alternative government financing activities that would help in economic growth activities, such as the financing of development and infrastructure projects in line with Saudi Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia, the leading oil exporter in the world, is already past the halfway mark in its blueprint of economic change (Vision 2030).

Introduced in 2016 by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin ‌Salman, the strategy will require hundreds of billions of dollars of government spending to cut the economy of the kingdom off its reliance on hydrocarbon revenue.