The Linkage between Oil and Non-Oil GDP in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s major producers of oil. The Saudi Government has launched its vision for the coming decade: Saudi Vision 2030 (also known as 2030 Vision). Saudi Vision 2030 aims to diversify economic income and be independent of oil revenue. The focus of Saudi Vision 2030 is increasing the role of the non-oil GDP in the economy. In this study, I tried to examine the link between oil and non-oil GDP in Saudi Arabia. I used autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration, the most common tool used to examine linkages among variables. My ARDL results confirm the long-term cointegration between non-oil GDP and oil rent, thus implying that oil rent-seeking strategies still exist in Saudi Arabia. The short-term dynamics confirmed the impact of oil rent over the non-oil GDP. The ARDL results led to analyses of asymmetric effects. The NARDL model estimated and confirmed the symmetric effect of the oil rent on non-oil GDP. These results demonstrate the challenges in diversifying Saudi Arabia’s income.