With a per capita income of US$14,094 in 2009, Saudi Arabia is among the high-income developing countries. As the country’s economic planning process is very sophisticated, the standard of living is not only measured by per capita income, but it includes life expectancy at birth, enrollment rate in primary education and percentage of population with access to clean water. This makes policy planning in Saudi Arabia quite in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the World leaders in 2000.The economic and social analysis underpinning the current National Development Plan (2010-2014) calls for attention to the equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth and overall development. This concept represents the core of the pro-poor policies that have been advocated by UNDP worldwide.

In fact, the support of UNDP Saudi Arabia to the formulation of the successive five-year development plans has been instrumental. The success of such process is evident in the breadth of issues covered as well as the time horizon to incorporate the Saudi economic vision for the year 2025.UNDP has locally proved its relevance and value-added in the following specific areas of intervention: MDGs; Pro-Poor Economic Growth; Globalization; Private Sector Development; and Civil Society Empowerment. Under the general practice area "Poverty Reduction", UNDP Saudi Arabia streamlines all its programmes and projects into more specific "Service Lines" which steer UNDP's work.