PIF sets new five-year strategy to drive returns

• Vision, Strategic and Financial portfolios
• Sector focus including tourism and manufacturing
• Neom also an investment focus

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has approved a new multi-year strategy aimed at boosting returns and expanding private sector involvement, signalling a shift in how it deploys capital at home and abroad.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF), which oversees more than $900 billion in assets, said its 2026-2030 plan will organise investments into three portfolios: a Vision Portfolio focused on domestic projects that can attract foreign capital, a Strategic Portfolio managing key national assets, and a Financial Portfolio covering global investments.

PIF announced on Wednesday that its chairman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had signed off the plan.

In a press release PIF’s governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said that the 2026-2030 strategy is “a natural next step in PIF’s growth journey”.

“In the next five years, we will continue to build on our great achievements and strengthen our global leadership to deliver success for PIF and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The new strategy outlines six sectors on which the fund will focus investments: tourism; urban development; advanced manufacturing; industrials and logistics; clean energy, water and renewables infrastructure; and Neom.

Further reading:

• PIF to release new strategy focused on private sector in ‘weeks’
• Everything you need to know about Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects
• Neom terminates $1bn tunnel contract at heart of The Line

The fund, which has been the main driver of the Vision 2030 development strategy to diversify the economy, has been vocal about its ambition to see private and foreign direct investment play a bigger role in its development projects.

In an interview in Miami last month, Al-Rumayyan also suggested that the fund would move away from attempts to fund large-scale gigaprojects on its own and solicit more engagement with the private sector.

Speaking in February, Saudi Arabia’s former investment minister Khalid Al Falih said that certain projects, like Neom’s city The Line, which is being overseen by PIF, may be deprioritised in favour of other more pressing projects.

Al Falih was replaced by PIF official Fahad AlSaif a few days later.