#Saudi Prince MBS’s Vision 2030 Confronts Coronavirus, Oil Shock - Bloomberg

Saudi Prince MBS’s Vision 2030 Confronts Coronavirus, Oil Shock - Bloomberg:

The courtyard around the Grand Mosque in Mecca should be teeming with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims marking the start of Ramadan. Instead, it’s deserted: The coronavirus pandemic has hit the city where the Prophet Mohammed was born.

Saudi Arabia’s health minister appealed for social distancing during the month of abstention, a time of large gatherings at iftar, the daily meal at sunset to break the fast. On state-run Ekhbariya TV, doctors and nurses are hailed as heroes as they test foreign workers living in cramped quarters and hand out medical supplies in plastic bags with a rose sticking out of each one.

The country’s response to Covid-19 was to lock down quickly, winning praise from many Saudis. Tourism is at a standstill worldwide, hitting the finances of many nations. The economic impact of the pandemic, though, couldn’t have come at a more pivotal time for Saudi Arabia.

This was supposed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s year. For 2020 the plan was for Saudi Arabia to exhibit some of the first fruits of its great modernization project—from a record number of Muslim faithful visiting holy sites to new industries and entertainment that showed the society had become more open and could one day thrive without oil. Then in November, the 34-year-old prince, the kingdom’s de facto leader, would claim the spotlight on the world stage by hosting his fellow Group of 20 chiefs.