Saudi Arabia to create 1 million new jobs in retail

09 Jul '16

2 min read

In line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030, the Saudi retail sector has taken concrete steps to generate 1 million new jobs by 2020 and provide the youth with more opportunities to work in commercial shops, vegetable markets, telecommunication shops, and several other fields.

Saudi Arabia's retail sector enjoys more than SR 370 billion in investments annually and retailers will play a central role in the implementation of Vision 2030 as also realising the goal of limiting the unemployment rates in the desert country, Fahad bin Saiban Al-Sulami, Member of the Board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry told website www.arabnews.com .

The retail sector, said Al-Sulami, will help bring unemployment down from 11.6 percent to 7 percent, as stipulated in the vision, while the labour market will see more female participation and an over 10 percent growth.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development's upcoming 5-year plan will see more than 1.3 million Saudi nationals enter the labour market as a result of the plan to nationalize the retail, telecommunication, taxi, travel and tourism, real estate, gold and jewellery, and vegetable market sectors, he said.

Al-Sulami also stressed the need to face the major challenges facing the retail sector, such as 'cover up' practices, the high cost of available commercial spaces, labour shortages, limited investment in training national cadres, as well as inadequate infrastructure to serve the sector.

"Many SMEs turn to expatriate labour because they are seemingly more affordable, a situation that has increased the percentage of expatriates in the sector to more than two-thirds and created significant economic pressure," he said. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India