Al-Sale Eastern Company has maintained its pole position of being the top women’s business in Saudi Arabia in 2008. In a space of a year, Al-Sale, which is capitalized at SR6m, doubled its assets from SR100m at end 2006 to SR200m at end 2007.
For Al-Sale is headed by Sheikha Nadia Al-Dossary, the feisty entrepreneur and women’s rights campaigner, who runs a scrap metal empire, with an annual turnover of SR500m. Close on her heels is Raefah Al-Turkmani, group executive manager of Ghassan Al Nemer Holding Group, another Eastern Province-based company, which last year had an even higher asset base than Al-Sale at SR255.96m. The Dammam-based Ghassan Holding Group is capitalized at SR137.77m and specializes in gold and jewelry. Last year it reported net profits of SR14.42m up from the SR6.7m in 2006.
Al-Dossary’s contribution to the development of women in Saudi business was recognized in May 2008 when she won the “Saudi Achievement Award for 2008” given by Arabian Business Magazine. She was unmoved by the fact that she could not collect the award in person at the ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh because of social mores.
Al-Dossary has achieved international acclaim for her business feats — the London-based Financial Times has named her one of the top 25 economically influential women in the Middle East and she has been profiled in the Washington Post.
Entrepreneurs such as Nadia Al-Dossary and Raefah Al-Turkmani are part of an impressive and growing Saudi businesswomen cadre, which includes the likes of the experienced Lubna Al-Olayan, CEO of Olayan Financial Services; Samra Al-Kuwaiz, managing director of Osool Brokerage Company (women’s division); Nabila Tunisi, acting manager, projects department at Saudi Aramco; Soha Aboul Farag, a banker with 17 years of experience who in 2006 was chosen for the “International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership” in the US; and Dr Nahed Taher, CEO of Gulf One Bank, and a host of others.
They epitomize the changing role of Saudi women in business and industry and are the pioneers for the new and future generations of Saudi women especially in an era of socio-economic reforms in the Kingdom where the contribution of women to economic development is being increasingly acknowledged, albeit long overdue.
In the Arab News Saudi Businesswomen Top 20 Companies 2008, Al-Sale and Ghassan Holding topped all the indicators such as turnover, total assets and profitability.
The two companies also accounted for employing 556 people in 2007 more than double the number of employees in 2006 at 226 people. Together the Top 20 companies employed 1,070 people in 2007, with Sarmada Trading and Marketing in Jeddah headed by Dr Haifa Al-Angari; Yibreen International Ltd; and Future Experts Group headed by Reem Bakheet, reporting the highest percentage of women employees.
The sector diversification of businesses owned and run by Saudi women is also increasing, ranging in this year’s listings from industrial activity, gold and jewelry, trade and fashion, optical goods to events management, interior design, public relations, education and even industrial project management.
In addition, Riyadh-based Luthan Trading Company, whose chairman and managing director is Princess Madawi Bint Mohamed ibn Abdullah Al-Saud, is listed as a service provider and reported a net profit in 2007 of SR47m based on a capital of SR25m.
Apart from three or four companies in the listings, most of the other companies would be classified as small business enterprises given their low capital and asset bases. However, their net impact is far more important in the wider context of the empowerment of Saudi women in business and commerce. According to the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, small businesses and home-based businesses are the mainstay of women involved in business in the city and in the Kingdom, although high-achievers as Nadia Al-Dossary encourage Saudi women to seize every opportunity and to aim for bigger challenges on the basis of merit and business acumen.
Jeddah is clearly the top location for the proliferation of businesses run and owned by Saudi women, although this may be misleading given the lack of statistics about women in business in the Kingdom. The Businesswomen Center at Asharqia Chamber, for instance, laments the fact that there are no statistics on the number of industries owned and managed by women. Very often a factory can be owned by a woman as a silent partner, but it is actually managed by a man. Last year, the Asharqia set up a women’s industry committee to collect data and conduct studies on the opportunities available for women. The aim to educate and encourage Saudi women to invest in industry, and to leverage recent reforms in government regulations such as easier industrial registration procedures, financing and free plots of land to establish a factory at the industrial cities.
With more chambers of commerce in the Kingdom opening up their membership to Saudi businesswomen, it is only a matter of time that a more comprehensive picture emerges of the true contribution of Saudi women in development, business and the economy.
In 2007, the Khadija bint Khwailid Women Center at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry (JCCI), carried out a study on investment by Saudi businesswomen. According to the study, such investment reached some SR8 billion, which is around 21 percent of total investment. Women “own” some 1,500 companies – about 4 percent of the total registered businesses in the Kingdom. There are 5,500 commercial registrations of women’s projects, representing 20 percent of businesses in the retail, contracting, wholesale and transferable industries sectors.
Only the uninformed would underestimate the economic power of women in the Kingdom. Women own 10 percent of real estate especially in major cities such as Jeddah and Riyadh, and 30 percent of brokerage accounts in the Kingdom. They own some 40 percent of the family-run companies, very often as silent partners. Saudi women as a whole own estimated cash funds of SR45 billion, of which 75 percent is sitting idle in bank deposits.
