Saudi Transparency Metrics: EITI, Budget Disclosure, Procurement Reform, and Open Data

Transparency is the governance dimension where Saudi Arabia’s progress and its limitations collide most visibly. The kingdom has made measurable improvements in fiscal transparency, budget disclosure, government data publication, and the institutional frameworks for accountability—improvements that are real, documented by international assessments, and significant by the standards of the kingdom’s own history. Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia remains among the world’s most opaque governments by the standards of international transparency indices, with structural features of its governance model—the absence of an independent judiciary, the suppression of press freedom, the lack of civil society monitoring, and the concentration of authority without formal checks and balances—that place fundamental limits on transparency regardless of the reforms enacted. This examination traces both dimensions: the genuine progress and the persistent limitations, using the international benchmarks and metrics that provide the most objective framework for assessment.

Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: The Energy Revenue Question

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative represents the international standard for transparency in the management of revenues from oil, gas, and mineral extraction. EITI requires participating countries to disclose information about how their extractive industries are governed, how much revenue the government receives from extraction, and how those revenues are allocated and spent.

Saudi Arabia’s engagement with EITI has been limited but evolving. The kingdom has not formally joined EITI as an implementing country—a status that would require full compliance with the EITI Standard, including the publication of EITI Reports and validation by independent assessors. This non-participation places Saudi Arabia outside the club of major resource-producing nations that have committed to extractive industry transparency, including Norway, the United Kingdom, and several other countries whose governance standards Saudi Arabia aspires to match.

The practical implications of non-participation in EITI are significant for a country where oil revenues—at SAR 606.5 billion in 2025—remain the single largest source of government income, despite the progress of economic diversification. Without EITI compliance, there is no internationally standardized disclosure of how oil revenues flow from production to government accounts, how production decisions are made, how contracts with international oil companies are structured, or how the revenue is allocated across government spending categories.

Saudi Aramco’s partial listing on the Tadawul stock exchange—the landmark 2019 IPO that made Aramco the world’s most valuable listed company—introduced a degree of financial transparency through the company’s quarterly and annual reporting obligations to the Capital Market Authority and to its public shareholders. Aramco’s financial statements disclose revenue, production data, capital expenditure, dividend payments, and other financial metrics that provide a window into the kingdom’s oil economy. However, the government retains overwhelming majority ownership of Aramco, and the company’s relationship with the state—including the tax and royalty regime, the dividend policies that fund government operations, and the strategic decisions about production levels—is not fully transparent through public financial reporting alone.

The development of Saudi Arabia’s mining sector under Vision 2030 adds another dimension to the EITI question. The kingdom has identified mineral resources as a pillar of economic diversification, with significant deposits of phosphate, bauxite, gold, and other minerals. As this sector develops, the governance and transparency frameworks for mineral extraction revenues will become increasingly important—and EITI compliance would provide the international standard framework for addressing them.

Budget Disclosure: Progress and Opacity

Saudi Arabia’s fiscal transparency has improved significantly under Vision 2030, though it remains limited by international standards. The government publishes an annual budget statement that discloses total revenues, total expenditures, and major spending categories. The budget statement provides breakdowns of revenue by source—distinguishing between oil and non-oil revenues—and expenditure by sector, including allocations for defense, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other government functions.

The quality of budget disclosure has improved over time. The government now publishes quarterly fiscal performance reports that track actual revenues and expenditures against budgeted figures, providing a degree of in-year fiscal monitoring that was not previously available. The General Authority for Statistics publishes economic data including GDP, employment, inflation, and trade statistics that provide context for fiscal performance.

The Open Budget Survey, conducted by the International Budget Partnership, provides the most rigorous international assessment of budget transparency. Saudi Arabia’s score on the Open Budget Index has shown improvement but remains in the lower tier of the global rankings. The survey evaluates the availability and comprehensiveness of key budget documents—including the pre-budget statement, executive budget proposal, enacted budget, in-year reports, mid-year review, year-end report, and audit report—and assesses the opportunities for public participation in the budget process.

Areas where Saudi Arabia’s budget transparency falls short of international standards include the limited availability of detailed budget supporting documents, the absence of a publicly accessible citizens’ budget that presents fiscal information in accessible format, the limited scope of legislative (Shura Council) budget oversight, the absence of independent fiscal monitoring institutions, and the restricted opportunity for public participation in budget formulation and oversight.

The fiscal transparency challenge is compounded by the role of PIF in the kingdom’s economic management. PIF’s investments—which collectively represent hundreds of billions of dollars in commitments—operate outside the conventional government budget process. PIF publishes an annual report that discloses aggregate financial information, but the detailed investment decisions, the performance of individual investments, and the terms of investment agreements with international partners are not publicly disclosed. Given PIF’s central role in Vision 2030’s implementation—including the financing of Expo 2030 through the Expo 2030 Riyadh Company—this opacity creates a significant gap in fiscal transparency.

Procurement Reform: Efficiency and Accountability

Government procurement reform represents an area where Saudi Arabia has made tangible progress in improving transparency and efficiency. The traditional procurement system—characterized by closed bidding processes, limited competition, and significant discretion in contract awards—has been progressively replaced by more open, competitive, and technology-enabled procurement processes.

The Government Tenders and Procurement Law establishes the legal framework for government procurement, requiring competitive bidding for contracts above specified thresholds, publication of tender notices, standardized evaluation criteria, and documentation of contract award decisions. The law represents a significant improvement over the previous system, which operated with less formal structure and greater discretionary authority.

Electronic procurement platforms have been introduced to facilitate competitive bidding, reduce administrative costs, and create audit trails for procurement decisions. The Etimad platform serves as the central electronic procurement system for government entities, providing a digital marketplace where tenders are published, bids are submitted and evaluated, and contracts are awarded. The electronic system reduces opportunities for corruption by creating documented, auditable procurement processes and by increasing the visibility of procurement activities.

The Expo 2030 procurement pipeline is particularly relevant to the procurement reform narrative. The $7.8 billion Expo budget will flow through dozens of construction contracts, consulting engagements, and procurement packages. The contracts already awarded—Bechtel as PMC, Buro Happold as lead design consultant, Nesma & Partners for infrastructure, Binyah for early works—represent the initial wave of a procurement program that will expand significantly through 2026 and beyond. The credibility of this procurement—the assurance that contracts are awarded on merit, that pricing reflects market competition, and that the process is free from corruption—depends on the strength of the procurement reform framework.

International observers have noted improvement in Saudi procurement practices but also identified areas where the reform agenda is incomplete. The transparency of contract award decisions—particularly for contracts awarded through negotiated procedures rather than open competition—remains limited. The availability of information about contract performance—whether contractors are delivering on time, on budget, and to specification—is not systematically disclosed. And the role of PIF entities in the procurement process—where the procuring entity is a PIF subsidiary rather than a government ministry—creates governance dynamics that may not be fully covered by the Government Tenders and Procurement Law.

Open Data and Digital Transparency

Saudi Arabia has launched open data initiatives that aim to increase the availability of government data for public use. The national open data portal publishes datasets across multiple categories including economic data, demographic data, geographic data, and government service data. The Saudi General Authority for Statistics publishes comprehensive statistical data including GDP, employment, population, trade, and social indicators.

The open data initiative reflects the global trend toward data-driven governance and the recognition that publicly available government data can support economic development, academic research, civic engagement, and government accountability. Saudi Arabia’s open data efforts have been recognized in international digital government assessments, with the kingdom’s e-government capabilities ranked among the most advanced in the region.

The limitations of open data in the Saudi context reflect the broader transparency constraints. Data that relates to politically sensitive topics—military spending details, security force operations, political prisoner numbers, judicial proceeding outcomes—is not published. The open data that is available tends to focus on economic and demographic information that supports the kingdom’s development narrative while omitting data that might support critical analysis of governance performance.

The digital government platforms—Absher, Tawakkalna, and others—provide transparency in government service delivery by creating documented, auditable interactions between citizens and government agencies. These platforms reduce the discretion of individual government officials, create records of service delivery performance, and provide data that can be used to monitor and improve government responsiveness. In this operational dimension, Saudi Arabia’s digital government program represents genuine transparency progress.

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index provides the most widely referenced global benchmark for governance transparency. Saudi Arabia’s most recent CPI score of 52 out of 100 places the kingdom in the middle tier of the global rankings—above the global median but well below the countries that lead the index. The Nordic countries, New Zealand, and Singapore score in the 80-90 range, representing the gold standard of governance transparency. Saudi Arabia’s score positions it roughly comparable to Italy, Malaysia, and Botswana.

The CPI trajectory shows incremental improvement, reflecting the cumulative impact of anti-corruption measures, procurement reform, and institutional development. The 2017 Ritz-Carlton operation and the government’s reported recovery of $106 billion in settlements represented a dramatic, if procedurally controversial, anti-corruption action. The strengthening of Nazaha, the implementation of financial disclosure requirements for public officials, and the reforms to government procurement and financial management have contributed to the gradual score improvement.

The structural limitations on Saudi Arabia’s CPI performance are significant and unlikely to change fundamentally in the near term. The CPI measures perceptions of corruption, and those perceptions are shaped by the transparency mechanisms that Saudi Arabia’s governance model constrains. Media freedom to investigate corruption, independent judicial oversight of government financial management, civil society organizations that monitor governance performance, and legislative oversight of executive spending—the mechanisms that support high CPI scores in top-ranked countries—are either absent or severely limited in Saudi Arabia.

Freedom House and World Bank Governance Indicators

Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” report provides a broader governance assessment that encompasses political rights and civil liberties alongside transparency. Saudi Arabia’s score of 8 out of 100 places it among the most politically restrictive countries in the world. The extremely low score reflects the absence of democratic elections, the ban on political parties, the appointment rather than election of the Shura Council, the suppression of political dissent, and the absence of mechanisms for citizens to participate in governance decisions.

The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators provide additional dimensions for assessment. Saudi Arabia’s performance varies across the six governance dimensions the World Bank measures. Government Effectiveness—the quality of public services, the competence of the civil service, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to policies—is the dimension where Saudi Arabia performs best, reflecting the institutional capacity the kingdom has built for economic management and public service delivery. Regulatory Quality—the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that promote private sector development—has also improved significantly under the Vision 2030 reform program.

The dimensions where Saudi Arabia scores poorly—Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption—reflect the structural features of the governance model rather than the adequacy of specific reforms. These dimensions measure characteristics of governance that are fundamentally at odds with the centralized, non-democratic model Saudi Arabia operates: citizen participation in government selection, independent judicial check on executive authority, press freedom to hold government accountable, and civil society capacity to monitor governance performance.

Environmental Transparency: The Climate Dimension

Saudi Arabia’s environmental transparency is increasingly relevant as the kingdom positions itself as an Expo 2030 host with sustainability credentials. The Environmental Performance Index, produced by Yale University, provides a quantitative assessment of environmental governance across multiple dimensions including air quality, water resources, biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and environmental health.

Saudi Arabia’s EPI performance reflects the environmental challenges inherent in its geography and economic structure. As one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon producers, the kingdom faces inherent tension between its economic dependence on fossil fuel exports and the global transition toward renewable energy. The government’s sustainability commitments under Vision 2030—including renewable energy targets, environmental restoration projects like Green Riyadh, and the sustainability features of the Expo 2030 site—represent efforts to address this tension, but the credibility of these commitments depends on transparent reporting of environmental data and progress.

The Expo 2030 site’s sustainability features—energy-efficient cooling systems, renewable power generation, adaptive reuse-ready designs, and the Wadi Al Sulai restoration—are presented as evidence of the kingdom’s environmental commitment. The credibility of these claims will depend on transparent, third-party-verified reporting of the actual environmental performance of the site during and after the Expo.

The Transparency Paradox: Reform Without Openness

Saudi Arabia’s transparency profile presents a paradox that reflects the broader tensions in the kingdom’s governance model. The government has implemented genuine reforms that have improved fiscal transparency, procurement accountability, data availability, and institutional anti-corruption capacity. These reforms are documented by international assessments and represent real progress by the standards of the kingdom’s own history.

Yet these reforms operate within a governance system that structurally limits the transparency mechanisms that international standards regard as essential. Without an independent press to investigate, without an independent judiciary to adjudicate, without elected legislators to oversee, and without civil society to monitor, the effectiveness of transparency reforms depends entirely on the goodwill and self-discipline of the government itself. This creates a transparency framework that is vulnerable to selective application—transparent about achievements and opaque about failures, open about economic data and closed about political governance, reformist in form and restrictive in practice.

For Expo 2030, this transparency paradox has practical implications. International media covering the Expo will report on the governance context in which it takes place. Participating nations will assess the credibility of Saudi commitments based on the kingdom’s transparency track record. International organizations will evaluate the Expo’s claims—about sustainability, about economic impact, about inclusivity—against the transparency of the evidence supporting those claims.

The kingdom’s challenge is not merely to improve transparency metrics—which it has done and will likely continue to do—but to build a transparency framework that is credible to international audiences accustomed to independent verification, adversarial scrutiny, and accountability mechanisms that do not depend on the government policing itself. This is a challenge that procedural reforms alone cannot address, because it ultimately requires structural changes to the governance model—an independent judiciary, press freedom, civil society space—that the current leadership has shown no inclination to make. The transparency of Saudi Arabia in 2030 will reflect the choices made in this tension between reform and control, between aspiration and authority, between the openness the kingdom claims to seek and the power it is unwilling to share.