Official construction licenses issued by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs registered a decrease from 112,362 two years ago to 100,756 last year. 

According to a statistical report released by the Ministry, Riyadh took the lion’s share of construction licenses last year, with 24,084 licenses accounting for 23.9 percent. Makkah came second, with 17,261 licenses, followed by the Easter Province with 16,805 licenses, Al-Qasim, with 10,355 licenses, Asir, with 6,284 licenses, Hail, with 4,281 licenses, Tabuk, with 3,764 licenses, Al-Jouf, with 3,238 licenses, Madinah, with 3,007 licenses, the Northern Border, with 1,668 licenses, Jazzan, with 1,357 licenses and Al-Baha, with 1,222 licenses.  

Experts in the field said the rate of construction in Saudi Arabia witnessed has great variations during the past two years but that construction activity saw great developments during the past few years across sectors and fields. The biggest rate of growth was witnessed in the residential sector in line with the government’s recent efforts to find solutions for citizens’ housing. 

The experts are also unhappy with the employment of unqualified labor for construction purposes. The majority of construction workers in the Saudi market are expatriates with little or no experience in construction. This calls for the setting up specialized institutes to attract and train young Saudis in the construction industry, especially since expatriates monopolize a large share of supervising engineers’ jobs in the construction market.

Engineers estimate the volume of money wasted in Saudi projects to be SR 60 billion a year as a result of sub-contracts, poor implementation and waste in using material in the construction industry, in addition to the absence of contracts to protect parties. The experts called for devising a financial, technical and administrative system to train contractors irrespective of licenses granted to them.

Talal Samarqandi, chairman of the Committee for Engineering Offices in Jeddah Chambers, said there were more than four million workers in the contracting sector, 95 percent of whom are foreigners and just five percent of whom are Saudi. 

“The construction industry in Saudi Arabia is the biggest training workshop for foreigners from around the world. They are recruited from their original countries without having any skills or experiences in the construction sector. They start working in the construction sector, but after they gain experience, they leave and we begin the training process again,” he said. 

He said there are 198,000 licensed companies in the contracting sector in Saudi Arabia with more than four million workers.

Jobs in the construction sector need to be nationalized and create a solid base for this industry by training young Saudis and encouraging them to establish their own business, especially in light of the increasing projects that are currently underway.