Ministry of Economy and Planning Website:  https://www.mep.gov.sa

In the year 1970, The Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP) was established in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The ministry intends to be an influencer and facilitator in aid to orchestrate the Kingdoms' socio-economic vision by setting out policies and managing growth that reflects economic value. The initiative intends to provide substantive and technical assistance to the Government in mainstreaming social and economic development in national policies across all sectors within the Kingdom.

The main roles of the MEP are to support the national vision outlined by the Kingdom, by being at the center of development in regards to national economic policy and socio-economic planning. This is conducted on an enabler and advisory level, as the MEP has been positioned and placed as the socio-Economic expert. 

The MEP objectives are related heavily to the socio-economic landscape, in aid to developing the nation's capabilities, aspirations, and international standings in being a leader in economic sustainable growth and prosperity. Some of the objectives include the MEP putting forward programs that diversify the economy, by analyzing, developing, and improving policy. This required investment in social and intellectual development on a national level. 

The MEP also ensures that its framework covers and integrates all sectors and regions regarding socio-economic development planning. This is conducted with support and recommendations from international economic cooperation and various partnerships. Building a centralized system, allows the MEP to improve on the economic model, as it can monitor, analyze and report on various capabilities, resources and successes. 

Ensuring the Kingdoms' fulfillment of its international roles and responsibilities in development and sustainability, also allows the MEP to develop methods and proposals for improving public, private and third sector productivity and efficiency. By empowering the socio-economic decision-making process through economic research, the impact and effectiveness is a resulting measurement that fosters internal capabilities in aid to achieve world-class organization of excellence.

The MEP mission is to influence, facilitate, and orchestrate socioeconomic leadership within the Kingdom. It aims to sustain the growth and diversification of the Kingdom’s economy and support the advancement of its international rankings. It does this by ensuring policies and legislations are suitable to the national needs, fostering social, human, and intellectual capital development, ensuring coverage and integration across all sectors and regions, recommending and supporting international economic cooperation and partnership agreements, as well as developing methods and proposals for improving public, private and third sector productivity and efficiency. As the MEP believes that empowering the socio-economic decision-making process through economic research and impact and effectiveness outlines the ideal way to centralize and improve economic modeling, monitoring, analysis, and reporting capabilities. 

As of (STATE YEAR), The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) within the Kingdom has been in close talks with the MEP, to offer its support, technical knowledge, and a pool of experts to the initiative. The UNDP is working on an umbrella program that entices and promotes socio-economic development on a national scale.

Being able to build custom framework models, capacity-building workshops and training sessions, and impact analysis reports and surveys, the UNDP can contribute heavily to the MEP on a wide range of landscapes. 

The UNDP as an entity carries with its vast experience in the realm of technical assistance to such entities, as it practices sustainable development goals (SDGs) in several ways across the globe. These SDGs echo in 170 nations that the UNDP currently resides, as it is an avid ambassador of development. These goals aim to ensure a better life for all, and what a way than to tackle social science and how it affects economic activity on a local, regional and global scale.

The UNDP plans and routes its functions of economic assessment of sectors by assesses their risks while encouraging economic growth. This is conducted with aid from various statistical agencies based in the Kingdom, that provide data for analyzing that the UNDP can offer sound recommendations on that offer quality assessment to reach the national economic objectives outlined by the 2030 Vision.

The MEPs program offers advancements in human capabilities, such as early childhood learning, and older at an educational level, by covering various curriculum and syllabus programs, the initiative is funded by The Ministry of Finance, zakat, and crowdfunding channels. 

Politically, the MEP conducts various analyses on data that can affect various policies and in return re-write certain legislations. This has proven to be a huge influence on lawmakers and the UNDP can offer its suggestions and recommendations as an institutional agency that can support such tasks with its wide international experience in policy creation, development, and amendments. 

The MEP also contributes heavily to the economy by creating mass awareness and methods that improve the economies of scale throughout the Kingdom and improve social standings via its policies and processes. 

The MEP has adapted to technological change, as has the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has enhanced its digital transformation efforts to be a fully paperless society; it has the capabilities to reduce barriers using digital systems, it ensures nationwide connectivity via 5G implementations, and consistently advances in telecommunications. 

Promotion within the workplace while abiding by imposed anti-discrimination in the workplace is something that the MEP and UNDP explore with continuous effort. They share the same values of gender equality, fairness, and non-biased decision-making based on all social scales. 

Environmentally those attitudes don’t change. The UNDP functions tirelessly to an agenda of a better climate and environment for all. The MEP carries out various programs that help aid the handling of climate change and water security, which coincide with the UNDP SDGs. 

It can always be perceived that the MEP is out to disrupt the status quos through policy. This is a negative impression taken on by public perception that has not fully grasped the concept of the MEP mandate. Since the policies and programs put forward by the MEP aim to increase economic and social growth in both public and private sectors, their outreach programs aim to aid, educate and inspire. 

Vision 2030 is a much-talked-about target across the Kingdom and on an international level. Hence why the MEP is considered as the supporting body for the relevant authorities and the government parties' in strategic and operational planning, The Ministry provides this support with the aid of necessary information from data, statistics, and studies to the relevant authorities, and works to harmonize the sectors and regional plans between the relevant authorities.​

Time sensitivity is a challenge in the MEP as is layers upon layers of interest from various stakeholders as data collection and analysis have a short impacted timeframe. However, process and educated programs hope to consistently drive accuracy in reporting on a more frequent and reliable level that can satisfy all parties and within time constraints. 

The successes to date of the MEP are many, but the key groundbreakers have been to initiative and influence reforming laws and policies on a national level, to ensure social protection for the population, the offering of labor market programs, and the process of which is used to identify challenges and risks.