In an effort to break away from its image as an economically monolithic and socially repressive regime, the Saudi Arabian government concluded in San Francisco yesterday a five-city American road show to lure American businesses into the country, touting the privatization of its water, rail, and power-generation industries.

Experts said, however, that the changes represent the ceding of only a fraction of economic control in one of the most state-dominated economies in the region. Production of crude oil and petrochemical products, the so-called jewel in the kingdom’s crown, continues to be owned and operated by the government.

Privatization initiatives that began in 1999 to open Saudi Arabia’s desalinization, rail, and power industries have only now translated into major infrastructure projects open to foreign and joint ownership, according to the chairman of the Saudi trade mission, the Saudi Committee for the Development of International Trade. During the first stop of the public and private partnership’s five-city American tour last Monday in Manhattan, the chairman, Khaled Musaed Al Seif, welcomed American businesses to compete for contracts – which Saudi officials said will total an estimated $623 billion by 2020 – across such sectors as the oil and gas, petrochemicals, mining, and telecommunications industries.

The American tour, which ended yesterday, is of both economic and political consequence, experts said.

By courting new American business, the Saudis hope to stem their country’s rampant unemployment, which is as high as 30% for young men in the oil-rich country, according to the director of the Middle East studies program at the University of Vermont, Gregory Gause. He said addressing unemployment would go a long way toward muting anti-American sentiment in the country.

Saudi officials also hope such reforms will help the kingdom gain acceptance into the World Trade Organization.

The American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Oberwetter, who attended the conference in Manhattan last week, told The New York Sun that the forum, like the meeting at Crawford, Tex., April 25 between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah, was a gesture that would help re-establish the relationship between the countries that had grown cold since September 11, 2001. The conference was held “in cooperation” with the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Energy.

One of the daughters of King Faisal, Princess Loulwah Al Faisal, said changes in Saudi law had allowed greater ownership of businesses by Saudi women.

“What we want the American business [community] to know is that there are more and more women involved in very big businesses,” she said.

Despite such pronouncements, huge social barriers against women in Saudi Arabia are deeply ingrained, Mr. Gause said. Laws banning women from driving, and social mores that keep women from being in the same room as men, mean women would continue to be relegated to traditional female markets: banks set up for women, baby products, and women’s clothing, for example. Women still make up an extremely small part of the Saudi work force, Mr. Gause said.

“The intent of the reforms are real,” he said. “Whether it turns into a surge of women in the work force remains to be seen.”

Other social barriers to a free market remain. Visas still require individuals to identify their religion, making it difficult for American Jews to travel to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Gause said.

“And if you have Israeli stamps on your passport, they won’t let you in,” he said.

Mr. Al Seif said such barriers would not apply to businesses, though since Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, Israeli-owned businesses would not be able to enter the kingdom.

Still, the promise of profits in the oil-rich kingdom drew an array of companies to the New York conference, from banks such as Citigroup and UBS to the insurance giant Aetna. With visions of a wave of foreigners flocking to the kingdom, the conference also attracted Manhattan based real estate brokerage companies Brown Harris Stevens and Nest Seekers, whose brokers attending the conference included an Egyptian woman and an Israeli man.

Barriers against Israelis and Jews did not stop a Tel Aviv native, Danny Anitian, from saying the future could be different.

“I believe in the next few years there will be peace in the region,” Mr. Anitian said. “Everybody gains from these things.”

Security companies provided a reminder at the New York session that American companies on Saudi soil would also fuel the possibility of terror attacks, like the ones last year against an American consulate.

“Because of terror, security is becoming a priority,” the director of marketing for Intelligent Security Systems, Suranjan Ray, said. “Saudi Arabia is a huge market for us, the whole Middle East, really.” Intelligent Security Systems produces software that operates face and license-plate recognition technology.

Mr. Al Seif said a law passed by the Saudi government in 2000 set the stage for direct foreign investment in the country. Decisions by OPEC to increase oil production, which will eventually grow to 15 million barrels a day in 2009 from 9.5 million barrels a day currently, will fuel an economic boom in Saudi Arabia in the next two to three years, Mr. Al Seif said.

“These reforms that have taken place in the economy have opened up new opportunities, new tremendous opportunities that were never available before,” he said.

Foreign insurance companies will soon be able to open branches in Riyadh. Deutsche Bank has already received a license to operate in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Al Seif touted those changes as larger signs that the kingdom’s economy is diversifying and becoming more open to market forces, though scholars of Saudi Arabia said the changes should be taken in stride.

“The fact that Saudi Arabia is taking initial steps toward reform is a good sign but they have a long way to go,” the director for trade policy studies at the CATO Institute, Daniel Griswold, said. “They are going to have to do a lot more than appoint a Supreme Economic Council to get the job done.”

The road show included stops in Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, and San Francisco.

“This is a good beginning on the business side, just as the Crawford meeting was a good meeting for the bilateral relationship side,” Mr. Oberwetter said at the time of the first session.

He urged American companies to remain competitive in the region because in other oil-starved countries, foreign businesses, especially Chinese and Indian ones, have begun to compete for construction projects earmarked for the coming years. “We are losing business to other countries because we are not present,” Mr. Oberwetter said.