Riyadh – Mubasher: Large numbers of expatriates are leaving Saudi Arabia after the kingdom’s continuous moves towards Saudisation.
In the first quarter of 2018, foreign labour fell 6% year-on-year to 10.2 million workers in the kingdom, Bloomberg reported, citing official data, which also showed that expat numbers had declined in the manufacturing, trade, and construction sectors.
The Saudisation process also included higher fees on companies employing foreigners. Despite the move, official data showed that the rate of unemployment among Saudis had grown slightly to 12.9% in Q1-18.
“We are expecting the rate of job losses for expats to remain elevated over the course of the year,” Mohamed Abu Basha, an economist at investment bank EFG-Hermes in Cairo, stated in a report.
Saudi authorities began imposing a fee of SAR 100 per month on expats’ companions in July 2017. The fee is set to rise to SAR 400 for each month in the by July 2020.
“Dependents fees for lower income expatriates as well as greater efforts to nationalise the workforce make it less economically opportune for foreign workers,” director of economic research at the Gulf Research Center John Sfakianakis noted.
In December, the Saudi Ministry of Finance (MoF) said it would start imposing monthly fees between SAR 300 and SAR 400 on foreign workers whose numbers have exceeded their Saudi counterparts in the kingdom’s workforce.
The MoF also expected it would collect around SAR 28 billion in revenues this year from imposing fees on expatriate workers.
