Explore Saudi Arabia’s economic outlook and Vision 2030 progress at WEF 2026, highlighting growth opportunities and diversification strategies.
At WEF 2026, Saudi officials and global business leaders framed today’s economy as defined by “uncertainty” and fragmentation, arguing that resilience and predictability are now competitive advantages. Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said policymakers can’t eliminate shocks, but must reduce “ambiguity,” keeping decision-making “stable” so investors can earn “the right returns for risk adjusted.” World Bank President Ajay Banga highlighted a structural emerging-market risk: 1.2 billion young people will enter adulthood in 12–15 years while only 400 million jobs are projected, a gap that could fuel instability if unmet.
Economy Minister Faisal Alibrahim positioned stability as a discipline that attracts capital; despite an 11% global FDI drop in 2024, Saudi FDI rose about 24%. Franklin Templeton CEO Jennifer Johnson echoed that “capital goes where it’s treated well,” citing regulatory clarity, domestic demand, and investable capital markets as key, while noting Saudi’s rising IPO pipeline and broader market opening.
Noubar Afeyan argued uncertainty can be an innovation catalyst, pointing to Saudi’s biotech ambition and partnerships that could compress ecosystem-building from decades to 5–10 years. Across speakers, Vision 2030’s lesson was long-horizon execution with fiscal anchors: deficits are “by design” when borrowing funds productive capex, not consumption, and plans must be adjusted without “ego” to avoid overheating.
Well. Good evening everybody. My name is Joanna Versace. I'm an anchor for Bloomberg Television. I'm very appreciative of you all coming. I know it's late in the week and it is late in the day, but we are going to have a fascinating discussion at the title of this session is A Check in on the Saudi Economy. Now, the English poet John Donne once said, no man is an island. And that is also true for today's economies, especially an economy like Saudi Arabia, which is an economy highly integrated into global and financial markets. Now, I've been here for all of the week. It's been a busy week for everybody. And I will tell you a couple of phrases that have come up just in the last couple of days. Number one is uncertainty. That's been a theme. Number two has been geoeconomic fragmentation. That was also the number one risk that was flagged in the global risk report that was put out by the World Economic Forum last week. So Geoeconomic fragmentation also heard about New World order. Many leaders have referenced that. And my favorite one came from the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who sent a warning shot to Middle Nations saying if you're not seated at the table, then you're on the menu. Which essentially meant that world's middle powers need to come together. We're not here to talk about geopolitics. That's not the focus of this discussion, but we are here to talk about how countries can navigate all of these global headwinds, the uncertainties, the challenges, and do it in a constructive fashion. At the end of the day, the title of the forum is a Spirit of Dialogue. So that's what we're going to begin. Let me introduce our panelists. His Excellency Mohammed Al-jadaan, the Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, to his left. Ajay Banga, president of the world Bank Group. To his left. His Excellency Faisal Ibrahim, Minister of Economy and Planning for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to his left. Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton and to her left. Noubar Afeyan, CEO of Flagship Pioneering. Also, you may know him as the co-founder of Moderna. So, Your Excellency, I'm going to start with you quite simply. Are we in a new phase in the global world order that requires governments to think differently?
Well, thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for being here. I think we have been in this new world for some time, but we are slowly realizing it. And the earlier businesses and governments alike realizes this and build resilience. The better for their companies and for their nation. The second point I think that needs to be said very clearly is absolutely uncertainty is now the norm and businesses obviously hate uncertainty. And our role as policymakers is to make sure that we provide a predictable environment for their businesses. I mean, they can price trade tariff, they can price, additional tax, but they cannot. They find it very difficult to price ambiguity. And our role is to make sure that we provide a predictable environment. We are doing this. We are trying to ensure that we build that resilience within our economy and give the private sector that predictability that they need. And, you know, generally the security of the decision making process, that it is stable, it is predictable, and the returns that they are getting in their investment is the right returns for risk adjusted.
Yeah. Can I ask you what you think the biggest challenges right now to emerging market economies? I spoke about many, perhaps geopolitical obstacles that need to be navigated, but there's a whole spectrum of other challenges as well. If you think about higher interest rates, higher debt load. I did a panel on debt, actually yesterday. What do you think is the biggest challenge right now?
You got to break challenges into what you think happens in the next year or two, versus what is systemically and structurally a problem in the emerging markets. And, you know, if you step back for a second, I think the world is taken aback by the fact that growth rates have actually done better than people thought in the last couple of years. If you again break that down, the US, China and India outperformed the US because a great deal of investment went into AI and data and infrastructure, but also because the US economy has got certain inbuilt, what I call shock absorbers and systems which enable it to pull through at these moments. India and China have actually China has outperformed in the sense it's a little under 5%, but again, better than people thought. And India has done close to 8%, again, better than people thought. In the environment of uncertainty that Mohammad started talking about. But when you go to the other part of the world, the emerging markets, actually one out of four is still 10% lower in its per capita GDP than it was pre-COVID. Hidden inside that are all kinds of problems to do with debt, liquidity, fiscal management, profligacy in their thinking at that moment when interest rates were low, you know, borrowing felt easy. And as Mohammad once told me when I was first becoming a candidate for this, you have to think long term, not just this term. So I'm answering this to you in the same way. Think about debt and liquidity as a deep problem today. But really, if you want to think about both the problem and an opportunity, which I think is a problem, not just for the emerging markets but for the developed world, is the demographic bulge coming through the emerging markets in the coming 12 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people are going to get to 18 years of age in the next 12 to 15 years. In the emerging markets. Those same countries are currently forecast to create around 400 million jobs. And this is before, and we can argue about the merits and demerits of AI. And I have my own view, but this is before I factor all that in. Now, these estimates are made by economists, and economists tend to be notoriously wrong. But but if they're wrong, they're not wrong by 800 million. Now, if we get this right and we work on creating jobs in those countries, we create hope, optimism, and an engine of growth for the world economy for the coming 30, 40 years. If we get it wrong, we create illegal migration, instability, military coups, social challenges, all the things that all of us will regret in the coming 15, 20 years. Okay. To me, this is therefore both the challenge and the opportunity. There is a great way to get this done. If you get chance, you know, keeping an eye on time. We'll talk about that. I have a whole thesis of how it can be done. But to me this is the the underlying thing. You have to keep an eye on.
Anchor for stability within the opportunity.
Of these people. And the alternative. Yes. You got you got it.
Your Excellency, do you want to say something?
No, no.
Okay. Your Excellency Ibrahim, I also want to bring up the concept of trade as well. And one of the first things that I said is geoeconomic fragmentation. Again, lots of conversations about French showing onshoring, rewiring of supply chains. And I spoke to Trade Minister. I know you're not the trade minister, but I spoke to Trade Minister a couple of months ago and he said to me, trade is like water. It always finds a way to flow. And I wonder when you're thinking about long term planning, which is, of course, your remit, how you keep the trade flowing and how you keep those cross-border dynamics going to ensure the stability that Ajay speaks of.
I think that's a very interesting question. I'll comment first by saying his trade minister always throws these phrases at us that we start to end up using in everyday policymaking. So I appreciate that. But, I'll start by saying maybe you said a fragmenting world and fragmenting world. You know, one of the rarest things is that a commitment made today will be honored tomorrow. Trust shapes how we trade. It shapes how markets stay active and operational because the participants can predict what's happening. And as such, stability becomes a rare currency. Stability becomes, an opportunity and maybe even a competitive edge. I'll use Saudi. I'll just connect this Saudi Saudi treats stability as a discipline, whether it's in policy regulation or in implementation execution. It's very important at the period of of 20 for FDI globally dropped 11%. FDI in the kingdom increased by almost 24%. And, you know, it's it also shapes the quality of the investments that are coming into the kingdom because we prioritize stability on top of that, you know, continuous reform. But reform on paper is not enough. It needs to be coupled with, streamlined regulatory framework that guides and enables the private sector businesses to think long term and navigate uncertainty with a little more confidence. Professor John List, University of Chicago. He used to work. He talked about the time when he was in the white House and we were talking, asking him a question, and he said, the number one objective for a policymaker is removing uncertainty. And I think that's vision 2030 is is working on that. Despite going through a massive transformation, unlocking potential and the transition risk that comes with any transformation, you know, some uncertainties are avoidable. Some is intentional in the Kingdom's vision. That transition we couldn't avoid, the the uncertainty that came with the transformation, but we mitigated it by showing clear purpose, why we're doing what we're doing. What are the outcomes, outcomes we're pursuing? And also, continuous engagement and continuous, updates on the progress, I think in a very fragmented world or an increasingly more fragmented world, one way to maintain trade is to become a stronger economy, but also become a stronger economy through stability. And then maybe something in parallel that's outside of its support, the building up of stability elsewhere. And for us, it's a regional dimension to stability is not something you can buy or do like this. You have to build and it has to accumulate, with time for it to be the right kind of stability that nurtures prosperity.
Very pertinent given today's signing ceremony. Jenny. Well, you are CEO of Franklin Templeton, and you are responsible for managing billions of dollars of AUM. How are you choosing where to invest?
Just like water flows through on trade. Money capital goes where it's treated well. So, you know, you're looking for markets where, there is growing economies, where there's liquidity, where you're going to make good investments and good returns. And so, you know, I think the first step in any market is ensuring that it's a good growing economy. So what is a good growing economy? What are usually the features in that? Oftentimes you have to have domestic demand because that actually insulates your your capital from from other kind of shocks that happen in the system. I think what a lot of economies learned is that energy independence is a real strength, because if you don't have it, there can be a big shock there. I think regulation is really, really important. If you look at Europe, as I remind the Europeans, well, first of all, one little data point, 1990 per capita income, was similar, in US and Europe. And today, you know, Germany is 20% lower. I think France is 35 and Italy's 40% like. So we started on par. Something happened. I remind them, you know, I bet there's a lot of really brilliant German entrepreneurs, but for some reason there isn't a big, massive German tech company out there. And I think that's regulation, regulation that enables, innovation and is supportive of innovation and is clear, you know, what the rules are is really important. I think, you know, one of the things that that the kingdom has, it's so strong is the vision 2030 gives you a roadmap. So having that clarity, I think one of the shortfalls in the US, and obviously we've been able to get around it a lot, but we elect politicians in four year cycles, and so we tend to think and make plans in four year cycles. China thinks in 100 year cycles that's another advantage. So if you get if you can get it to and younger demographics, that's really important. And India actually had almost all of those things except they have pretty convoluted regulation and that had hindered their growth. You have a new regime you're starting to pull together and you see how it's taking off. So you start with that strong economy. And then the next question is, well, what are the capital rules around that. And liquidity, the ability for a diverse investor base is really important. Foreign capital being able to come in and out. So all those features and with that usually comes really good investment opportunities.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you for the comprehensive answer. My very long very direct question. No, but let me let me come to you. I introduce you as the co-founder of Moderna, but of course, you you wear many different hats. You're a leading voice in the private sector, also philanthropists as well. And I just wonder when you think about some of the challenges that we were talking about, what role you actually see for NGOs and for multilateral institutions, and very cognizant that AJ is sitting here, and in dealing with some of these most pressing challenges.
Well, yeah, this you've heard the macro view. I kind of not even micro, probably nano world. I'm in the business of starting companies. I've been doing it for 40 years, particularly at the interface between human health and technology. And Moderna was one of those companies. And we learned a lot. And I'll come back to in a minute during. So I'll just add my perspective to this discussion. During Covid, of course, the world was thrust into a form of uncertainty. That's truly uncertainty. And I think from I'm not an economist, but what I understand is this frank night night uncertainty concept is when you can't estimate probability of success, it's kind of hard to do risk reward if you can't estimate probability of success. And so when that type of disarray happens, people think it's really, really risky. It's not really risky. It's just the unknown what's going to happen. Well, it turns out that the innovation science world is filled with that. We actually wake up every morning and race towards uncertainty because we know that there's massive value hidden in the uncertainty. How do we know that? We know that everything that is popular today was uncertain ten years ago. And so if we had an ability to work on what is happening today ten years ago and owned it, we'd be paid a lot of money. It's just that the Wall Street doesn't want to give money to uncertainty. They're more than happy taking it into the risk domain. So I say all this because I think it's important to distinguish the two forces. And clearly, at a time of uncertainty, you need to toggle between thinking present forward and thinking future backwards. And I think in that regard, the Saudi vision 2030 is particularly useful in an environment like this, because if you can imagine what things may look like outside of the vagaries that have been imposed on the system really since Covid, I mean, if you look at Covid, it's not Covid that caused it, I hope, but everything has been a mess since then. It's been this is a pandemic of chaos in every regard. Supply chains, inflation, interest rates, wars, geopolitics, polarization. Just go back. Of course you can go back earlier. But that was.
That is correlation not necessarily causation.
That's what I'm saying. But the rupture kind of and again I think there's more expert people here. To me the rupture looks like we've entered a period of disequilibrium, which is not only bad for investors, but economists make, I think, most of their predictions based out of equilibrium. So what can we expect? As far as I'm concerned, what you can expect is the equilibrium to settle into a new order economically, in which we got to wait to see the opposing forces gather. And I think countries like Saudi Arabia are part of that, in that this is actually a big opportunity, in my view. It's a big opportunity. You might say, why would somebody in the biotech sector spend time with the Kingdom, which I have done for the last two years, quite a bit, actually. It's because they have a vision 2030 plan for biotechnology. Now, who would do that if you were busy based on resource based economies? Answer this is exactly the time to actually use technology AI, to use the fact that everybody is now aware of health security and rather health vulnerability. And to start saying, you know what? Not only do we have to take care of these things ourselves in the country, but also we can be an exporter, a net exporter of IP. So all of those things are interesting. I would argue uncertainty opens up these opportunities for countries that may otherwise be distracted within the equilibrium system. So that would be my added perspective from where we look.
At it okay. So uncertainty creates an opportunity I like that, Your Excellency, given Anova just talked about Covid. If you think about vision 2030, the implementation of it, it has weathered many, many shocks. One of them is Covid tariffs, lower oil prices. And the vision has also evolved as well. And I just wonder how you think about the evolution, the recalibration of the vision in line with those pillars of maintaining financial stability and economic stability, and of course, the trust of the international community in the vision.
This is actually very important. I think it is also important, particularly these days with a lot of countries struggling really with with the uncertainty, the fragmentation, the geopolitics. I think the secrets, I'll tell you the journey, the journey, basically, if I want to summarize it very quickly, is three phases. So we started the five first years really in the planning, preparation and structural change. So a lot of painful decisions. But at the same time we needed also to do things that touches the people very quickly. So things like housing programs, increasing the house ownership from what it was 42 and to 65, etc.. And the second phase, the second five years, which ended by the end of 25, was really doubling down in execution. And the third phase, where we started now is really maximizing the impact, you know, learning from the mistakes, rewriting things that needs to be rewritten reprioritizing making sure that you take stocks of what really have you done well and double down on them, what needs adjusting and adjust and move on. But then staying the course, you know, a reform like this needs a lot of gut, a lot of bold decisions will need to be made, and you need to stay the course through difficulties. The second point, which is very critical, is don't compromise in your anchors. So in our case, the anchor of the economy is actually the public finance. So don't compromise public finance for the sake of economy. So you need to make sure that you balance the two. If you actually go and just spend as if there is no tomorrow, you are losing your anchor base while the economy is still growing and still diversifying. So we actually maintain that balance very delicately.
Another way for saying keep the deficits under control.
Keep the deficit under control, make sure that you are actually spending where it matters, where it creates better growth, better jobs, better GDP impact, balance of payment, and make sure that you don't overheat your economy. I mean, we have seen actually in the last couple of years, the economy in certain sectors started to see overheating. So there is no issue at all, no shame, no ego of adjusting. So slow down in certain sectors and certain projects so that you allow your economy actually to grow with you. You allow the private sector to catch up with you. And the last point, which is absolutely critical, absolutely critical, is you really reach the threshold of really the real reform, not by getting unemployment only to where the target is or the housing where the target is. It's actually getting the real, I would say, philosophy behind the vision, the real reform to be the default action of the people. So you don't need to continuously press 18 hours of work. You don't need to do the follow up every day. It is it becomes the norm in the institutions. You know, it becomes actually the norm with the people that they are. They embrace it and you see it. I mean, if you those who are not from the region and particularly in certain regions without naming Europe, that is depressed when you see the people that are grumpy go and visit Saudi. Actually you will get you will get a lot of positive energy from there. The people just the driver who will drive you, the tour guide who will, will, will be with you. They will give you that positive energy because they believed in it. They saw the benefit and we are communicating with them that it is a journey. Certain parts of it will take actually a long time mining. I mean, we had the mining future, forum last week. It is an incredible journey that we are going through in the mining, but it will not we will not see the results next day. Mining will take 1015 years and industry will take five seven years. So we still haven't seen all the results. But you need to keep your people excited and engaged.
I've been interviewing you and His Excellency Feisal for for several years now, and, I always remember the phrase deficit by design, and I just wonder whether that's going to continue to be the case over the next few years.
I would say the short answer is absolutely yes. And my I was asked this, I think, a couple of days back, the current deficit is actually a policy decision, an absolute policy decision. And if you calculate and don't take my numbers, I mean, these are published numbers. If you calculate the amount, the total amount of debt that we have, which is about 1.5 trillion Saudi riyal, and compare it to the CapEx that we spent during the same period the last ten years. You will see actually, we spent on the CapEx more than the debt. So as long as you borrow to spend on something that will actually ignite growth for the future, you are safe. If you borrow to spend the consumption today, you are in trouble because you are actually leaving your kids with that burden, with that liability.
Yeah.
That's exactly the conversation Jenny and I had yesterday in our global debt panel. Your Excellency, I want to come to you just to build on what His Excellency Jordan was saying. And also, vis a vis perhaps more targeted spending, what are the main sectors that are going to be the focus in this next phase?
So I'll just add to what His Excellency said. I think the key driver is optimal deployment of capital. And I think by now the system, the Saudi system knows when to go full throttle and when to fine tune, if the debt increases, deficit increases, debt increases. Now, higher chance than ever that it's going to something specific that's going to create value and give us the return as far as sectors. Maybe before that. I think just momentum is strong in many sectors. If we look at, and we talked about this, non-oil activities today represent 50, 56, 55, 56% of total real GDP for the first time. Momentum is great today.
76% from last year, right?
No, no. Up. I'd say 2 or 3. It's been honestly, it's been inching upwards. But the growth of.
5%, the non-oil growth is 5%. But what is Excellency is talking about is non-oil as a total total GDP.
Yeah. And non-oil growth we project for the next three years to be between 4.55.5. We're still debating some teams, but we have a governance on it. But it's it's comfortably 4 to 5%, maybe even higher actually conservatively. On within the non-oil activities, which are 81, 74 have grown over the last five years, 5% annually or more, and 38 of them have grown 10% or more. And if you look at these activities there across the board and they represented by quality growth. So we see non-oil exports growing. We see number of factories in establishment or in foundation growing, the pipeline also growing in terms of tourism in the sector, and the trade balance or the exported services balance, switching to positive in a very short period of time. So there are indications that it's working and it's delivering. But the question became, at what cost? We know how we know it works. We know the momentum. We want to make sure it continues with optimal impact at the right cost. It was justified at that period because you wanted to catch up decades of untapped potential to kind of accept some losses or costs, etc.. But moving forward, it's about why spend coupled with structural reforms that are, you know, deliberate and that give us results that, spending money will be limited in terms of. So I think the continuation of the same sectors, the anchors, His Excellency mentioned energy in its wider definition with energy transition solutions, health care. There's a real challenge in healthcare. There is a real demand. The population is 70% below 35. It will start aging in 20 years, 18 years. And then defense technology, artificial intelligence, mining. Like I said, think across the board. You'll see that whether there are new sectors or sectors with deep knowledge accumulated over decades, they will witness a lot of, new growth drivers.
Yeah.
AJ, almost every country that or country representative that I speak to and I'm speaking to every single country around the world. But but there is a focus on on investment in artificial intelligence, on the technologies of the future. I think there's a lot of conversation around, strategic investments in AI to develop a technology advantage, but also one that promotes inclusive growth. So how do you think about the digital divide and various advancements of artificial intelligence around the world? In an environment where we said there are many, many challenges and governments have to think about where they're spending is going?
How much time do you have? That question could consume 16 years. So so let me just answer it in two parts. The first is AI itself, what we've been discussing in Davos over the last few days is a certain type of AI. Large language models headed towards generative AI. Very important. Great opportunities in certain kinds of things coming from it. People are talking about the challenges and services jobs in particular that it could create, but look at it from a different lens. What do you need for large language models and generative AI? You need four things. You need computing power. Lots of it. You need electricity. Lots of it. You need data. Lots of it. Kept in its simplest form, with safety and security built in. And you need people who understand how to manipulate all that. There are very few emerging markets in the world that have those four things. Very few. So if anything, I believe if all we talk about is large language models and generative AI, I think inequality will expand, not reduce. On the other hand, small AI, not big AI as in this small AI is different. Small AI connects back to my jobs point, which I'd love to talk about for a minute because it connects to vision 2030. So let me explain the small AI. If I'm a farmer in a village in Kenya, and I can use a phone to point to a disease on this plant, and I have no idea what the heck it is, and I don't want to know the name because I can't pronounce it. But I know that that disease is fixable by that insecticide that I can buy for $3 from my farmers cooperative. That's small. I or I can go to a primary health care clinic in a remote area of Saudi Arabia, and I can Mohammad comes in, I'm the nurse there. I'm not a qualified doctor. He says he has a rash here. I can take a photograph. I send it to you. The doctor. You say it's just eczema. Give him this ointment. Tell him to go away or it's actually something I don't like. I'd like him to come to the regional hospital within X number of days. Here's the appointment set up. Actually, Saudi, coincidentally, is one of the biggest users of this idea of a virtual hospital. But anyway, that's a side comment I didn't. What I'm trying to tell you is that small AI, it changes your daily life. It makes emerging markets. People feel that AI is there help in productive, high quality growth in the coming years. If we don't manage this conversation well, we will lose the large majority of the world's population that will not be living in the developed world in 1520 years. I keep coming back to that point about that demographic piece. Trust me, this is not a light at the end of the tunnel. This could be a freight train if we are not careful about those demographics. So jobs, look at how vision 2030 integrates everything. If you talk to the leaders in Saudi Arabia like these guys and their boss, what is vision 2030? It's actually a way to design Saudi Arabia of Tomorrow for its people to be supremely happy, that they are living in a place that makes them glad to be on earth. That is what it is. That is why the energy of Saudis is what it is today, because they're seeing that come. But when you convert that vision into day to day stuff, it's about doing the right things that create jobs. What are those? First, build infrastructure. What is Saudi done over the last 20 years? Built amazing infrastructure, not just physical but human. How much money is this country investing in human capital and skilling, in education, in healthcare, large sums of money. So they're building both physical and human infrastructure. Second, they are focused on liberalizing their regulatory regime, sensibly paced but done. What have they done? All kinds of laws labor law, land law, bankruptcy law, you name it. These guys are working it methodically and systematically so businesses can fail. I get a predictable but liberal environment. I know the guide rails. I should not go out of them, but within those guide rails I can make money the right way. And then the third is financing the amount of money that has been plowed by them into creating the right catalytic opportunity for medium and small scale enterprises who, by the way, are under noticed as the real drivers of job growth in this country. That's the third thing. Why am I telling you all this? That's vision 2030. It goes back to five sectors that don't rely on trade as the only way to grow. What are those infrastructure, primary health care, tourism which is the single largest generator of job for every dollar invested in any industry. Value added manufacturing, minerals, metals, energy, other things, defense, industry and then agri technology for small farmers. Yeah, and all this backed up by entrepreneurship opportunities, which is one of the things that that His Highness is very focused on. So why did I start with jobs? Because I think Saudi has the demographic dividend that it wants to capitalize on. Their their leadership has figured out that they need to do it in a way that's constructive and makes people happy to want to be in Saudi. They don't want only Saudis to benefit. They want their neighbors and their region to benefit because they care about the bigger picture around them. They're actually watching a revolution going on quietly. And I'm a big admirer of it. So that's my piece.
Well, Jen, you get the follow up question to that. Given that the revolution.
Is very comprehensive.
It was very comprehensive. But at the same time, I think His Excellency Ali Ibrahim and Ajay both brought up the fact that there is a lot of interest in other sectors of the economy that are really beginning to take off now, and I've had many conversations with asset managers, investors from around the world, increasingly looking at Saudi Arabia as an investment destination, because these are very attractive sectors to put your money in, because they're going to be high growth and their stability over the next couple of years. So what is exciting you about the opportunities right now in the kingdom? And then also you've got a lot more competition in that space.
I mean, interestingly, like one of the things we've gone into private markets. Why? Because one, banks aren't lending like they used to. Private credit's grown and people don't want to go public. And so companies are waiting much longer to go public. So you've seen this dearth of IPOs Saudi Arabia has had the most IPOs I think, in the region. And their trajectory is going up. And I think they're I think the projection is this year, it's going to double from last year. And.
The opening.
Of the capital markets will.
Well, one is I think in February 1st, you're going to have an opening up of foreign investment. And there's already been. But you have to be qualified for certain things, but it's going to open up much more broadly. But even if capital comes in, you still have to have the entrepreneurs in the system that are actually building those companies and getting them to a point that they can go IPO, which means they have governance. Their financials are, you know, there's a lot that goes into that, that then becomes appealing to the institutional investors that are coming into the market. And so, again, I think that that and I have sat with, with various ministers where they have said, you know, tell us what we need to do so that we can improve our markets. What what do we need to do to be more attractive that that doesn't happen in every market, right? I mean, there's been a real intentional, just an intention around part of, vision 2030 where I think everybody knows you can't fund it all internally. Right? And so you're going to have to get it up to, institutional standards around governance, and also create that kind of environment where entrepreneurs can be successful and that will drive capital in there. And, honestly, I think that that you're seeing the trend in the numbers. I do think there has to be a lot of improvement in the debt market. There's a lot that needs to happen to support the equity market. But the equity market is really showing a lot of health from the from the, growing economy.
And the competition question.
Competition as far as foreign capital coming in and competing with others. You listen, we deal with it all over the world. That's, you know. it's healthy.
It's a good thing. Competition. Every time I ask anyone about competition they say competition is a good thing.
Hey, I have to.
Say, with Franklin Templeton, we have had been in the region for over 25 years. We will have offices in four countries in the region. And we actually have local asset managers. We are one of the largest Shariah managers. We know this area. We're one of the biggest GCC bond managers. We love it. And you have to know individual countries. You have to understand the culture to be able to invest in. I think it's much it's a much greater disadvantage to be far away and trying to invest in it without actually understanding the ecosystem. So we've got that advantage.
Let me let me turn to you since, innovation technology is also coming up as one of the themes of this panel. You have a partnership with the King Faisal Specialty Hospital, putting on, of course, the health care cap. How does that support the drive for inclusive growth and inclusive innovation?
So, the idea really started out with we were a couple of years ago, we were asked to think about what could be done to jumpstart and really achieve biotech ecosystem. That's excellent. Much faster than would normally happen. If you look across the world, these kinds of ecosystems emerge and they take 25 to 40 years and people look at the US and Silicon Valley and Boston, particularly in the biotech sector, and they say, I want one, except these things emerge and it's just impractical. Plus, the second time they emerge, they don't emerge the same way. So you might think you're going to wait 25 years, but it might be a lot longer. So when we were asked this question, one of the things we thought about is, you know, in the Kingdom, there is this practice in the past which has been quite successful of building a international or joint champion that ends up becoming the national champion. And if you look at companies like Sabic or Aramco, etc., in a different time, that is how there was a critical mass built. So one of the things that we've been attracted to and we've been talking about is what would it take to build a global standard bearer, and could it even be done in the biopharmaceutical arena entirely dedicated to new medicines? Not how do you secure the supply of blood, plasma derived drugs, etc., but rather a real kind of pioneer? And of course, in the vaccine area, you need that even more nowadays because you don't know where you're going to get your next vaccines from because they've been highly politicized. Reality W.H.O. is under a lot of stress as a result. So we kind of started thinking about that. And of course, our base of operation gives us the ability to think about that, because we have 40 companies in Boston, 10,000 people that are working on all new medicines. So a way to connect that with a new generation company. What's interesting, but you can't start with that. So one of the things we looked at is we said, okay, how do you do this in parallel? And one of the things we found is an interesting starting point for clinical trials. So what if we try bringing a few assets and doing the human clinical trials there, let's say 20, 25% of the overall size, particularly for diseases that are highly prevalent. These are rare genetic diseases. These are diseases where there's a real need and there's a preponderance of population. In doing so, we realized we could both test to see if the system can be scaled, and we can bring a lot of know how and expertise. So we started that with with the National Guard's healthcare system. And there's four programs that we've launched. But then at the same time we started looking at what about the underlying R&D infrastructure, and in particular, what can we think about doing with respect to AI? Again, I want to bring you back because I know every other discussion of every other panel has had this. And just for a little bit of inclusion, we should bring AI in in that. I wouldn't dare do this without an era where the data driven models are going to allow us to go much more definitively down the path we want to go than trial and error. Science based businesses are very iterative, trial and error, and I think what AI gives us the ability to do is to do that in a way where investors can look still not have high degree of predictability in the beginning, but pretty quickly you get overwhelmed with the technology advantage that you're bringing in. So we're working a little bit with humane. We're going to be accelerating some of that. And so it's an interesting time to be thinking, can you construct an ecosystem that brings health security and health prosperity over a relatively short period of time? We're talking about 5 or 10 years, and if so, how would you do it and what are the elements this partnership you talked about, which we just began late last year, is a first step of many to do that. And it's very consistent with the vision, but it brings a whole new dimension. And interestingly, it's the it's it's a place in the world where we think we can do this. It's not like we're trying to do this everywhere. Unlike where there's a huge global experience for us. This is an experiment, but we think it's worthy.
Yeah.
Your Excellency, we're coming to the end of this discussion. But, you know, one of the, essential features of Saudi 2030 vision is that it is a long term vision. Or when it was put together, it was a long term vision. We're coming close to 2030 now. And I wonder whether there are lessons that can be gleaned for countries outside the kingdom that don't have the benefit of putting together, say, a ten year or 15 year or 20 year plan because they're beholden to a four year or five year election cycle. What are the takeaways from your own experience?
I thought you will ask me an easier question.
You know.
Me getting into politics, but.
No, no, not politics.
I mean, I will answer. I and I really feel strongly about this very strongly, whether it is a business or a government, if you cannot really, particularly in a time where there is a lot of turbulence and a lot of uncertainty, if you cannot take a long term view and stick to that plan, it is going to be very difficult. And the fact that, you know, you look at the next quarter or next year results, if you are a company or the next two years election cycle, if you are in a democratic system, is a troubling prospect. And I think somehow corporates will, will, will obviously need to take long term and democratic system will need to find a way to adjust that system so that they can have actually ten and 15 and 20 year plans. China did not win because they planned for the next two years, and for years they win because they have 50 years plans. Saudi Korea. I mean, let me not even talk about Saudi Korea won. I mean, they were way.
During good times and bad times. Singapore was one of the poorest countries in the world. Now they are Triple-A, rated one of the most successful nations. Why? Because they had long term plans and they stick to it. That's the message.
Okay, well, panelists, I think that's a great way to leave it. Thank you so much for all of your input. It was a fascinating discussion from the global to the Saudi Arabian template. And hopefully you all benefited from all of the, the input that we got on the panel today. Thank you so much for attending.
Thank you.