RIYADH: Osama Kabbani, a top Saudi official and a member of the Committee on Economy and Energy at Shoura Council, called on Monday for the restructuring of the Saudi economy through diversification of sources of income.

Kabbani made his observation at the ongoing Global Competitiveness Forum GCF-2016 that was opened here on Sunday with the participation of top world economists.

However, he said, the Kingdom has the capacity and can face challenges prudently, stressing that the developed economies in the world are based on the knowledge-based economy, innovation and services sector.

The Shoura member stressed the importance to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) under young entrepreneurs initiatives to turn their energies, knowledge into products for the benefit of society and the national economy.

According to him, the real wealth of the Kingdom are its male and female students by improving their quality of education, noting that the scholarships abroad is now exceed 150,000.

“This will have a positive impact on the Kingdom by taking advantage of the capabilities of their productivity in the services sector,” Kabbani observed pointing out that tourism is one of the largest job-generating sectors and needs to be improved.

He said investments in the retail and mining sectors being very attractive for young people and economic value added should also be given attention for further improvement.

Kabbani has emphasized the importance of developing a plan and program to increase the number of Umrah visits to 15 million annually that would boost the services income as they make up a huge source of returns for the Kingdom.

"This expands the investment operations in hotels and public services in retail that needs also to improve infrastructure to accommodate all those large numbers," pointing out that the Kingdom has the will and good governance to achieve this aspiring to diversify its sources of income and the creation of a developed economy.

He added: “We need a great mettle of the private sector in order to play a better role in the nationalization of jobs, and they have great social responsibilities in investing on economic research to boost development.”