• Deputy Finance Minister Abdulmohsen Al-Khalaf said non-oil activities reached 55% of Saudi GDP for the first time, speaking at the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh.
• He put non-oil government revenues at around SR500 billion today, up from roughly SR166 billion in 2015.
• GASTAT's Q2 2026 flash estimate shows non-oil activity up only 0.6% year on year while oil fell 24.7%.
• A higher non-oil share can come from oil shrinking as well as non-oil growing, so the headline is not pure evidence of acceleration.
• Flash estimates can be revised, so the 55% figure should be checked against GASTAT's final national-accounts release.

Saudi Arabia's non-oil activities now account for 55% of gross domestic product, the first time they have reached that share, Deputy Finance Minister Abdulmohsen Al-Khalaf said on Monday at the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh, as reported by Saudi Gazette. He called it a structural shift reflecting diversification progress under Vision 2030. The official GASTAT data for the second quarter adds a caveat: the share rose in a period when oil output fell sharply.

What the minister claimed

Al-Khalaf said non-oil activities have reached 55% of GDP for the first time, and described the change as structural rather than cyclical, according to Saudi Gazette. He also said non-oil government revenues have risen from about SR166 billion ($44.3 billion) in 2015 to around SR500 billion ($133.3 billion) at present. Those are the minister's own figures, delivered in a speech; the report does not cite the underlying dataset or the period the 55% refers to.

Why the arithmetic matters

A share can climb because the numerator grows or because the denominator's other component shrinks. GASTAT's Q2 2026 flash estimate, as reported by Arab News, showed real GDP down 4.8% year on year, with oil activity down 24.7% and non-oil activity up 0.6%. On those figures, the non-oil share would have risen largely because oil contracted. Whether the 55% reading is mostly that effect is not established by the speech.

How the quarterly data fits

The Q1 picture was different. GASTAT's final Q1 2026 bulletin put real GDP growth at 3.0% year on year, with oil and non-oil activities each up 2.9%, and non-oil contributing 1.7 percentage points to growth. Arab News attributes the Q2 oil drop to disrupted crude exports linked to regional conflict. The sequence shows the non-oil share is sensitive to oil volumes, which makes the milestone harder to read as a one-way trend.

What to watch for markets

For investors tracking Gulf equities, the signal is the growth rate of non-oil activity, not its share. Q2 non-oil growth of 0.6% is modest against the Q1 pace, and the Q2 numbers are flash estimates that GASTAT may revise. The next GASTAT national-accounts release, and any detail from the Finance Ministry on how the 55% was measured, will show whether the shift is durable. None of this is a trading view.