Privatisation covers many types of transactions but typically includes the divestiture, whether by sale or lease, of state-owned assets to private investors. The Kingdom already has an established history of such privatisation through the partial sales of Saudi Telecom Company (2003), Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma'aden) (2008) and, most recently, the National Commercial Bank's privatisation through its $6 billion IPO (2014).

Although the Kingdom reduced its use of PPPs in recent years (instead procuring the development of such infrastructure projects directly through an engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) arrangements), recent market announcements suggest a comeback with the GACA currently tendering Taif Airport as a PPP - the GACA's first since 2012.