JEDDAH, 11 December — The population of Saudi Arabia topped 22.1 million at the end of 2000, 3.1 percent up on 1999, the annual report of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) said yesterday.
Saudis made up 16.2 million, or 73.6 percent, of the population, while the number of foreigners, mostly Asians and other Arabs, was 5.8 million, or 26.4 percent, the report said.
The report said that at the end of 1999, the work force in Saudi Arabia topped 7.2 million workers, of which 44.2 percent, or 3.2 million, were Saudi nationals.
Foreigners accounted for 55.8 percent, or four million, of the work force.
Some 900,000 employees worked in the government sector, 78.2 percent of them Saudis, it said.
Around 6.3 million worked in the private sector, 61.3 percent of whom were expatriates. Among the foreign workforce, around one million were menial domestic workers, including 400,000 maids.
Foreigners remit between $15 and $19 billion annually to their home countries, the report concluded.
