Don’t even think about getting the Sunday morning flight from Dubai to Riyadh. The same applies to the Thursday afternoon slots going back.

Both – and many in between – are booked solid by investment bankers, corporate lawyers, accountants, consultants and PR advisers who appreciate the weekend comforts of the UAE, but who know the big business is to being done in Saudi Arabia.

A huge economic transformation is planned for the kingdom, and the fees on offer are well worth a few days of strawberry juice in the puritan luxury of a five-star hotel in the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia is lining up a privatisation of state assets that dwarfs the Thatcher “revolution” of the 1980s, and rivals the 1990s dissolution of Soviet assets in scale and significance. It has hung a “for sale” sign on virtually every sector of Saudi economic life: oil, electricity, water, transport, retail, schools and healthcare. Even the kingdom’s football clubs are due to be auctioned off.

The sell-off programme is the central part of the economic transformation plan envisaged under the Vision 2030 strategy. With oil stuck around the $50 mark, Saudi budgets are creaking and deficits are widening. Around $75 is regarded as the break-even point for the national finances.

But in 13 years, if all goes to plan, the kingdom will be financially stable, with a more dynamic economy and society, less reliance on oil and government spending, and with a thriving private sector that releases the pent-up entrepreneurial spirit of Saudi men and (whisper it in the kingdom) Saudi women.

It is, of course, a big “if”, but for an economy stuck in the rentier mentality of the 1930s – when it became a country under the house of Saud and oil was discovered, and which has been ruled by the strict orthodoxy of Wahhabi Islam ever since – this will be nothing less than a revolution.

Rather than the Thatcher and Soviet analogies, some analysts compare it to the capitalist revolution brought about by Chinese moderniser Deng Xiaoping, which changed the economic shape of the world within three decades.

The centrepiece of the privatisation is the planned initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco, the country’s oil company and the source of all its wealth. If it goes ahead at the $2 trillion valuation hung on it by Mohammed bin Salman – Saudi’s crown prince and architect of Vision 2030 – it will raise $100bn on global markets, with London and New York vying for the lucrative IPO, in addition to Riyadh’s own stock market, the Tadawul.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi’s crown prince, is the architect of the Vision 2030 programme Photograph: Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images

That is a huge sum, four times the amount of the biggest IPO hitherto. But it is only half of the estimated value of the rest of the privatisation schedule. Mohammad al-Tuwaijri, the former HSBC banker who is now deputy economy and planning minister, said earlier this year that he expected to raise $200bn from the state sell-off over the next few years.

Although al-Tuwaijri said he had a “crystal clear idea” of the privatisation strategy, not everybody has such a good view of the road ahead. Questions remain on the motivation for the plan, the legal and regulatory structures that will govern it, and the form the sell-offs will take: IPOs, private equity deals, or trade sales to non-Saudis.

A Saudi banker, who asked to remain anonymous because his bank was involved in pitching for parts of the privatisation mandate, said there were two imperatives behind the sell-off plan. “The cash they will raise is relevant and should not be ignored, but the main aim is to support the Vision 2030 goal of encouraging greater private sector involvement in the economy.”

Having private control of education, perhaps with foreign involvement, would be revolutionary in Saudi Arabia Nasser Saidi, consultant

Nasser Saidi, the former economics minister of Lebanon and now an economic consultant, led an abortive attempt to privatise big chunks of his country in the early 2000s. He says: “When you approach privatisation you have to have a legal and regulatory framework, which is not there yet in Saudi.”

There is, however, a clearer idea of what assets are on offer, because virtually everything is potentially on the block. The National Centre for Privatisation, which began operating in March this year, has drawn up a list that reads like a cross-section of the Saudi economy. “Environment, water and agriculture; transport; energy, industry and mineral resources; labour and social development; housing; education; health; municipalities; telecommunication and information technology; and Hajj and Umrah [Islamic pilgrimage] services,” its website declares, are all subject to the programme.

Within that list, there are some obvious jewels in the crown. The Saudi banker says that, because of the kingdom’s youthful demographic, health and education are potentially lucrative investments. He singles out the King Faisal Specialist Hospital, the Riyadh complex that is probably the best medical facility in the kingdom, as one of the most eyecatching potential privatisations.

But, as many other privatisers have found, there are serious issues attached to selling off assets regarded as central to the nation’s social and cultural fabric. “Having private control of education, perhaps with foreign involvement, would be revolutionary in Saudi Arabia. Would the investors want to have control of [the] curriculum? It could go against the whole culture and tradition of the kingdom,” says Saidi.

To overcome these sensitivities, other more secular assets – such as power stations, desalination plants and transport infrastructure – are more likely initial subjects for the programme.

The sale of the kingdom’s airports has already begun, with Goldman Sachs appointed to oversee the privatisation of King Khalid international airport in Riyadh. Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz airport is already well down the privatisation runway, with Singapore’s Changi Airport Group winning the bid to run it.

The whole issue of foreign involvement is fraught. Traditionally, foreigners wanting to do business in the kingdom have needed a Saudi firm or individual as their “partner”, which has led to charges of inefficiency and corruption.

These rules have been changed with respect to certain sectors – retail and wholesale, engineering and most recently health and education – but large swaths of the Saudi economy are currently off-limits for full foreign ownership: areas such as energy, defence, media and telecommunications.

There are other hurdles to overcome. Some Saudis, and not just Islamic fundamentalists, have criticised the privatisation plan as selling the family silver, or asking them to buy something they already own. Some financial advisers only half-joke about the need for a public education programme – “Tell Sayeed” – about the benefits of state sell-offs along the lines of the Thatcherite “Tell Sid” campaign of the 1980s.

Preferential allocations for Saudi citizens in any IPOs, which the Saudi banker believes is a necessary sweetener, could overcome some of those reservations.

The western advisers cramming the Riyadh flights are there for the fees, of course. But there is also an increasing degree of buy-in from many experts on the whole strategy.

Ellen Wald, an American Middle East expert and author of forthcoming book Saudi, Inc., says: “It’s an ambitious plan. Even if the Saudis fall short, they will have made positive and necessary progress in diversifying and privatising their economy.”