Saudi- SAMA chief: Recruitment of foreign labor should be rationalized

(MENAFN- Arab News) One of the challenges confronting the national economy is the modest Saudization of the local labor force in the private sector said Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) Gov. Fahad Al-Mubarak.

He said: 'Recruitment of foreign labor should be rationalized; and general technical and vocational education programs should be further developed.'

He made these remarks at a recent workshop on 'Economic Policies and Prominent Challenges Facing the Saudi Economy to Achieve Sustainable Development.'

Referring to the issue of Saudization of the local labor force in the private sector he added: 'This requires intensifying current exerted efforts to develop a medium and long-term strategy with the active participation of the private and public sectors to address this challenge. Recruitment of foreign labor should be rationalized; and general technical and vocational education programs should be further developed.'

He added: 'The output of higher education needs to be enhanced to cope with the market needs.'

He said Saudi Arabia has adopted a wide range of policies decisions and actions aimed at restructuring and regulating the economy updating laws and regulations so as to enhance the level of efficiency and performance competitiveness and support the optimum operation of the factors of production as well as to provide a regulatory and administrative sophisticated framework and investment attractive environment.

The governor said: 'One of the short-term or maybe medium-term challenges facing the public finance is the significant decline in oil prices over the past few months leading to a decline in oil revenues that constitute a high proportion of the state budget's total revenues. A deficit is expected to be recorded this year.'

He said: 'As I have mentioned earlier the government has adopted an approach of building up financial reserves to counter such fluctuations in oil prices. The options considered now to select an appropriate one to finance this deficit is either withdrawal from these reserves borrowing from the domestic financial market which is characterized by a liquidity abundance and a low lending cost or perhaps both of them.'