JEDDAH, 10 January 2004 — Expatriate workers in the Kingdom have remitted about SR585.4 billion during the past 10 years, Al-Madinah Arabic daily reported yesterday quoting figures released by the Statistics Department of the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
The ministry said the amount was equal to the funds required by the Kingdom for infrastructure projects until 2020. It also noted that the remittances by the country’s seven million expatriates has increased by two percent annually despite the Saudization drive.
The department’s report also pointed out that 100,000 Saudi job seekers enter the labor market every year to find only 30,000 new jobs created there. “Foreigners represent two-thirds of the total workforce in the country,” the ministry said adding that the government was toiling hard to find jobs for its unemployed youth.
Referring to the capital drain caused by remittances of expatriate workers, the ministry emphasized the need to replace expatriates with qualified Saudi hands.
It also pointed out that the money sent abroad by the expatriates from 1993 to 2002 was almost double the amount they sent from 1983 to 1993 (SR291 billion.) In 1993 alone, remittances of expatriates amounted to SR67.8 billion but declined to SR57.7 billion in 2000 to rise again to SR59.45 billion in 2002.
About 95 percent of workers in the private sector are expatriates, accounting for 67 percent of the work force, the ministry report said. The Kingdom has taken a series of steps to reduce the number of expatriate workers in the country. Authorities have banned the recruitment of foreign workers to jobs which could be filled by Saudis.
“The high costs of recruiting Saudis should not dissuade the government from taking measures to force the private sector to hire Saudis and gradually dispose of foreign workers,” said Ihsan Buhulaiga, a well-known economist and member of the Shoura Council.
A study conducted by Buhulaiga revealed that such measures are needed to achieve the government’s target of creating more than 800,000 jobs for Saudis during the present 2000-2005 development plan.
But it is not only expatriates who are sending funds abroad. “Saudis have also been remitting money, exceeding SR21 billion during 2002” said Brad Bourland, chief economist of the Saudi American Bank (SAMBA), while quoting figures from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA).
Asked about the reasons for remittances from Saudis, Bourland said that many Saudi citizens who have been remitting money to foreign countries on a regular basis have children studying abroad.
