Crown Prince says Saudi Arabia won’t apply new taxes before 2030

Saudi Arabia does not plan to introduce any new taxes until 2030, as it already applied a value-added tax and corrected power and fuel prices, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg in an interview at the royal court.

“In 2015, we had to make a lot of surprises. We didn’t want to reach a point where we would lose a lot of opportunities. Now the chance of a surprise is almost 1 percent,” he said.

The Kingdom will see more than 20 services privatized in 2019; most of them in water, agriculture, and energy, while some are in sports. Talks are underway with local and international investors, Prince Mohammed said.

Analysts have previously stressed that privatization is key to drive the Kingdom’s economic growth and reform plans.

The Saudi government will own some of those companies to ensure quality performance for a period of time. The majority of these companies will go public as they move to the private sector, he said.

The plan is to pick the right investor, offer some companies on the stock market, watch them closely to detect any problems before they occur and intervene to fix them, the Crown Prince added.