RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Thursday said it transferred an additional eight percent stake from oil giant Aramco to firms owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, according to state media. This brings the state’s ownership to 82.186 percent of Aramco shares, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, with a cumulative 16 percent transferred to the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and its subsidiaries.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, announced “the completion of the transfer of 8 percent of Saudi Aramco’s total issued shares from the State’s ownership to” companies fully owned by the PIF, SPA said. The transfer is “a continuation of Saudi Arabia’s long-term initiatives to boost and diversify the national economy and expand investment opportunities,” SPA said.

Last year, four percent of Aramco’s shares, worth tens of billions of dollars, were transferred to Sanabil Investments, a firm controlled by the PIF, one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds.

In 2022, another four percent of Aramco shares, estimated at the time to be worth $80 billion, were transferred directly to PIF. Aramco and its assets were once kept under strict government control, completely off-limits to outside investment. But under Prince Mohammed, the kingdom has slowly begun to cede some of that control. The oil giant sold 1.7 percent of its shares on the Saudi stock market in December 2019, generating $29.4 billion in the world’s biggest initial public offering.

The PIF has made high-profile investments in firms including Uber and Disney. Its so-called giga-projects—centerpieces of Prince Mohammed’s reform agenda—include Neom, a $500 billion futuristic megacity under construction in the Saudi desert. The crown prince has said he wants the fund to have assets worth $1 trillion by the end of 2025. — AFP