Jeddah, Jul 7 (Arab News): The Saudi retail sector has taken concrete steps to achieve one of the goals of Vision 2030, which is creating 1 million new jobs by 2020 and offering the youth more opportunities to work in commercial shops, vegetable markets, telecommunication shops, and several other areas in the coming months.

Member of the Board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and member of the advisory committee for the development of society and education Fahad bin Saiban Al-Sulami said the sector will be crucial to achieving Vision 2030 and retailers will play a central role in its implementation.

He said the sector, which enjoys more than SR370 billion in investments annually and a 70 percent expatriate employment rate, will be one of the strategic targets of the nationalization program and will greatly help limit unemployment throughout the Kingdom.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development’s upcoming 5-year plan will see more than 1.3 million Saudi nationals enter the labor market as a result of the plan to nationalize the retail, telecommunication, taxi, travel and tourism, real estate, gold and jewelry, and vegetable market sectors, he added.
The retail sector, said Al-Sulami, will help bring unemployment down from 11.6 percent to 7 percent, as stipulated in the vision, while the labor market will see more female participation and an over 10 percent growth.

Al-Sulami stressed the need to face the major challenges facing the sector, including tassatur (cover up) practices, the high cost of available commercial spaces, labor shortages in the services sector, limited investment in training national cadres, as well as inadequate infrastructure to serve the sector.
“Many SMEs turn to expatriate labor because they are seemingly more affordable, a situation that has increased the percentage of expatriates in the sector to more than two-thirds and created significant economic pressure,” said Al-Sulami.