Has the Gulf actually diversified?
The usual answer is a single number: the non-oil share of GDP, which has risen almost everywhere in the Gulf. That number rises whenever the oil price falls. Here is the same official data measured a second way — the real size of the non-oil economy — forSaudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, 2010–2025.
The trap: watch the share do something the economy did not
Between 2014 and 2016 the oil price roughly halved. The Gulf’s non-oil share of GDP jumped from 59.7 % to 78.0 % — 18.3 points in two years, a move that in any other context would be read as rapid structural change. Then it wentbackwards: by 2022, with oil expensive again, it was 66.8 %, giving back 11.2 points.
The real non-oil economy did none of that. Measured at constant prices it went 129.7 → 141.7 → 166.0 over the same three dates (2010 = 100). It grew through the crash, grew through the recovery, and never fell.
So the share is closer to an oil-price thermometer than to a diversification measure.It is not wrong — it is a real ratio of real numbers — but it answers “how much of this year’s output was oil”, not “how much non-oil capacity has this country built”. Those are different questions and the Gulf data happens to separate them cleanly.
Non-oil share of GDP, at current prices
This is the comparable-across-countries measure, and the one that moves with the oil price. Read it across a row to see the 2014–2016 bulge and the partial reversal after it.
| Country | 2010 | 2014 | 2016 | 2019 | 2022 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 59.0 % | 62.1 % | 79.8 % | 75.0 % | 70.1 % | 83.2 % |
| United Arab Emirates | 71.0 % | 68.0 % | 82.1 % | 78.3 % | 70.8 % | 81.7 % |
| Qatar | — | 47.5 % | 70.3 % | 64.3 % | 55.7 % | 65.1 % |
| Kuwait | 44.1 % | 39.1 % | 61.2 % | 55.8 % | 46.8 % | 59.8 % |
| Oman | 58.4 % | 58.3 % | 75.3 % | 69.0 % | 60.3 % | 66.4 % |
| Bahrain | 79.2 % | 77.1 % | 88.6 % | 85.8 % | 82.6 % | 87.2 % |
| GCC (all six) | 59.2 % | 59.7 % | 78.0 % | 73.1 % | 66.8 % | 79.0 % |
Dashes are years the source does not publish for that country, not zeros — Qatar’s series starts in 2011.
Real size of the non-oil economy, each country = 100 in its own first year
This is the measure the oil price cannot move. It is not comparable between countries — see the caveat below — but within a country it is an honest record of growth.
| Country | Base year | 2010 | 2014 | 2016 | 2019 | 2022 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 2010 | 100.0 | 130.2 | 137.9 | 152.4 | 178.8 | 203.9 |
| United Arab Emirates | 2010 | 100.0 | 123.2 | 139.2 | 145.6 | 148.7 | 184.6 |
| Qatar | 2011 | — | 133.0 | 153.5 | 158.8 | 164.8 | 183.7 |
| Kuwait | 2010 | 100.0 | 113.5 | 114.0 | 125.9 | 131.1 | 141.4 |
| Oman | 2010 | 100.0 | 127.7 | 142.2 | 144.7 | 153.1 | 166.9 |
| Bahrain | 2010 | 100.0 | 117.0 | 126.3 | 140.7 | 148.4 | 169.0 |
| GCC (all six) | 2010 | 100.0 | 129.7 | 141.7 | 152.0 | 166.0 | 194.2 |
And the oil economy itself, on the same basis
Published far less often than the non-oil number, and it is where the surprises are. In real terms the oil sector is smaller in 2025 than in its own base year in one country: Qatar.
| Country | Base year | 2010 | 2014 | 2016 | 2019 | 2022 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 2010 | 100.0 | 118.5 | 127.6 | 122.3 | 131.8 | 118.1 |
| United Arab Emirates | 2010 | 100.0 | 121.3 | 137.8 | 130.4 | 135.5 | 138.0 |
| Qatar | 2011 | — | 100.4 | 98.8 | 94.7 | 94.1 | 94.5 |
| Kuwait | 2010 | 100.0 | 124.5 | 118.7 | 108.6 | 109.6 | 100.4 |
| Oman | 2010 | 100.0 | 105.9 | 114.7 | 112.0 | 122.9 | 120.9 |
| Bahrain | 2010 | 100.0 | 113.2 | 113.5 | 114.1 | 112.5 | 106.3 |
| GCC (all six) | 2010 | 100.0 | 118.1 | 124.8 | 118.8 | 124.7 | 117.5 |
Production quotas, not depletion, drive most of the recent movement here — OPEC+ cuts land in this series as a shrinking oil sector. We report the number; we do not model the reason.
Size, for scale
| Country | GDP 2025, US$m | Years held |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 1,273,555 | 2010–2025 |
| United Arab Emirates | 614,398 | 2010–2025 |
| Qatar | 215,560 | 2011–2025 |
| Kuwait | 157,193 | 2010–2025 |
| Oman | 109,605 | 2010–2025 |
| Bahrain | 48,966 | 2010–2025 |
| GCC (all six) | 2,419,276 | 2010–2025 |
Read this before you use it
- The constant-price levels are not comparable across countries. The six offices use 3 different bases — Kuwait 2010=100; Qatar 2018=100; Oman 2018=100; Saudi Arabia chain-linked 2023=100; Bahrain 2010=100; United Arab Emirates 2010=100. That is why every index on this page is set to 100 in each country’s own first year rather than printed as a level.
- “Non-oil” is the source’s own line, not our bucket. We did not assign industries. An outsider’s “non-oil” usually smuggles in refining, petrochemicals or state spending funded by oil; this one is whatever GCC-Stat publishes under that name.
- Dashes are missing years, not zeros. We do not fill gaps from neighbouring years.
- Recent years get revised. 2025 is the latest annual figure the source publishes; we captured this file on 2026-09-16 and re-collect rather than freeze it.
- No quarterly detail here yet, and no sector breakdown. The source carries both — agriculture through public administration, and quarterly back to 2010. That is the next build.
- No view on whether any of this is good news. That is yours to form.
Source
GCC Statistical Centre (GCC-Stat), national accounts, via its SDMX API — gccstat.org. Figures are in US dollars as published. The wording on this page is ours; the split between oil and non-oil is theirs.
This page reports published statistics. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything.
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