Brain drain

We are facing not only the issue of unemployment but also over-recruitment of foreign workers, who block job opportunities of citizens. We are also faced with the problem of illegal business or tasattur run by expats, eating away our revenues in the form of huge foreign remittances.

We have been sending Saudis for higher studies to reputable international universities on scholarship to enhance the quality of education received by them to take up important positions in the country. But many of these students do not come back to the Kingdom to take part in the development process.

We have been hearing complaints from the public and private sectors that qualified Saudis are leaving the Kingdom seeking better job opportunities abroad, including the GCC countries. Many companies outside the Kingdom offer high salaries to well-qualified Saudi employees.

This brain drain is a big loss for the country. We will lose highly qualified people in various sectors, if we don’t take steps to encourage them to stay in the Kingdom by offering good salaries and benefits.

We are still following the old salary scale. We have introduced only slight changes to the scale, which would not be enough to attract qualified Saudi workers. The public sector is the biggest loser as its salary scale is not all attractive to highly qualified specialists. If we fail to address this important issue we’ll surely lose many qualified and experienced citizens.

— By Yousuf Al-Kowaileet

Arab media and Paris attack

Ever since the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the Arab media has been highlighting the issue as an attack on Islam. Many Arab newspapers and channels published reports and articles apologetically as if they had sent someone to attack the satirical magazine.

We have seen that this magazine has hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world and four extremists gave a reply to their wrongdoing in a horrendous manner. How can anyone denounce 1.5 billion Muslims for this terrorist attack, which they did not agree or endorse.

Many Arab intellectuals have defended Charlie Hebdo in the name of freedom of expression but have ignored the fact that the magazine had fired a cartoonist for insulting Jews.

The Arab media has forced its people to apologize for the Paris attack but we should ask them what for? We have not killed anyone? We have not seen the Pope apologizing for the crimes committed by the Irish Republican Army.

Why do our Muslim organizations make quick statements condemning the attack and offering apologies for a crime they did not commit? Such crimes take place in the West almost every day.

— By Azzah Al-Subaie

Wrong approach

HOW do we find our culture and beliefs reeling from the Fareast to far west, hurtling us from the greatest good to the worst evil. All of a sudden, with the Paris terrorist attack most of our convictions that we are not affected by terrorism and that terrorism works up from our ranks, have turned upside down. Writers of ISIS have worked up in to a fury and the Islamic-Arab streets started echoing that this kind of terrorism is justified by the history and current events.

They snatched some suspicious and selective stories from the past to justify the IS terror attack and to convey the message that the West deserves terror attacks in return for its past atrocities against the Arabs.

This is a simple event that has let out the hatred and thirst for revenge lying deep in our minds carried to us down the history and from the stories we find in our present, but pointing to our frustration and we are never able to free ourselves from them. Many of them are true, but many are partially blind or lame truths that are unfair to us, to our sons and grand children and to our homelands, but truths that miss a convincing logic and evaluation and attracted by the smell of blood. The past is replete with colonialist stories and they are countered with stories of Islamic victories. Being content with the past stories can in no way affirm the sincerity and humaneness occurring now here and there.

The current events are not a purely western affair, but they have Arab and Muslim support and financing, a fact that makes us tongue-tied when challenges and investigations are made to discover the perpetrators. Our current aimless and shifting notions make us believe that what happens in the West is beneficial to us even if such happenings can cause some damage to us, which we ignore like a camel that laughs at the hump on the back of another camel and it does not see his own hump.

The terror attacks being carried out in the West is nothing compared to the attacks targeted at our own people in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria and Indonesia nor the terror attempts made to destroy the security of the Kingdom and the Gulf countries.

While the West fight against the terror, how can we, the greater victims of terror, promote terror? The West can tackle the simple acts of terror committed there with their intelligence and potential, while we continue suffering the consequences of the lethal terror crimes that does not stop at any time. How could we be, overnight, IS supporters justifying the terror which it keeps on showering on us while the West is looking at us getting more cautious.

We need a culture of total rejection of any kind of terror even if it is against the West. Chaos does not solve any problem but only adds to the confusion of the brain and worsening of the situation, and would create giants of IS who would be proud to be received by us even if they slaughter us and destroy our homelands.

— By Shahir Al-Nahari

Halal market

Muslims all over the world are very particular about consuming Halal food, as they want to avoid taking prohibited foodstuffs such as pork and alcohol. Halal food has become a big business in the world as many countries and companies specialize in such foodstuffs.

A recent report carried by the Saudi Press Agency has shown that the Halal market in the world has grown nine times to reach $10 trillion by 2030. The market is expanding at the rate of $500 billion every year.

According to the report, the market covers banking, medicine, tourism and cosmetics and will grow from $2 trillion to $6 trillion by 2020 and $10 trillion by 2030. The Halal market that follows the Islamic teachings not only targets Muslims but also non-Muslims who are interested in such food or products.

The growing Halal market offers good opportunities for Saudi businessmen and businesswomen to invest in related industries. This will not only help them to grab a share of the world Halal market but also contribute to the national economy.

— By Salah bin Fahd Al-Shalhoub

Sovereign funds

As the oil prices are collapsing and could take a while to recover, there is a much-needed discussion to have.

We are in need now for the sovereign funds to invest in the national treasures and diverse the income base from relying on petroleum only.

The latest edition of the Times magazine published a series of huge investments by Russian businessmen in Europe and the US. The massive investments are all well-thought out allowing businessmen like the billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s seventh richest man and the world’s 107th, to negotiate a deal to buy the most renowned American basketball club, the NBA. Another businessman in the magazine is the tycoon who owns 30 percent of the English club of Arsenal, Russia’s second wealthiest man Usmanov. The Times also featured Dmitry Rybolovlev, the owner of AS Monaco football club, and Roman Abramovich who purchased the British Chelsea Club for a quarter of a billion dollars in 2003.

The most beautiful islands in Miami Beach are owned by Russian tycoon Rustam Tarko. These observations signal a Russian approach to own clubs and fancy real estate in the US and Europe because of the shakiness of the oil prices and the ability to compensate their losses from oil by investing in sports and real estate.

There are varied figures regarding the contents of the sovereign funds, especially that many of them don’t announce the volume of their money.

The American financial services corporation Morgan Stanley conducted a study and estimated the assists of the sovereign funds at $2.5 trillion. Standard Chartered Bank said the volume of the funds’ assets equals 12 percent of the total trade of the New York Stock Exchange, and 42 percent of the total trade of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Unlike the general perception that these funds belong to the Gulf countries, Norway has the largest funds around the world with assets estimated at more than $322 billion. Singapore, China, and Russia run similar high-level funds, estimated at $100 billion in funds. Chile and Venezuela have also established funds of this type.

— By Mazen Abdul Raziq Balilah

Our industrial growth

During an industrial forum in Riyadh recently, Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said the Kingdom’s industrial sector grew by 6.5 percent in 2014, becoming the second largest economic sector in the country in terms of performance.

The minister also pointed out that the industrial sector contributed 11 percent to the gross domestic product. He expressed his hope that it would increase further to 20 percent in the near future.

No doubt the industrial sector needs support to achieve new heights. We have seen strong presence of Japan and South Korea in the global economy thanks to their industrial progress. The industrial revolution in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, which then spread to other countries, contributed to their economic progress.

Although the industrial sector does not provide much job opportunities because of the heavy use of machinery, but it helps citizens get employed indirectly, especially by getting involved in the production of raw materials required by industries.

This raises the question of how far our industrial sector is related with other economic sectors and its ability to make innovation. Some people say that our industrial sector is still in the beginning stage, by just doing assembling of parts imported from abroad, without adding value.

I don’t want to underestimate what has been achieved by the sector but we have to do more to establish our identity in the industrial world.

— By Abdul Wahid Al-Humaid