The Ministry of Labor and Social Development (MLSD) signed on Monday a memorandum of understanding with the General Authority for Statistics (GaStat) to develop various statistical products relating to manpower, social development and establishments as well as to maintain exchange of data. The ceremony was led by Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Development Ahmed Al-Humaidan and President of (GaStat) Dr. Fahad Altekhaifi at the ministry's headquarters in Riyadh. The agreement will support the national observatories for labor and social development and private companies, generate indicators and new programs in line with Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program 2020 and unify related standards and classification systems. The signing would achieve the strategic objectives for social growth, the national strategy for employment, the 10-year development plan, the privatization strategy and the national strategy for statistical development. According to the bilateral agreement, the ministry will cooperate with the authority to support collection of statistical data, publish survey results and share their administrative records on a periodical basis with the public as well as integrate with one another to serve public interest. The agreement aims to enhance joint coordination between the ministry and GaStat to publish statistics relating to manpower that focuses on a number of Saudi workers and job seekers, participation rate in the labor market, number of expatriate workers and unemployment rate. The ministry said the two parties agreed on exchange of information, data and statistics in order to meet the needs of decision makers and other stakeholders through providing informative data that is timely, comprehensive, reliable and flexible. Furthermore, the MOU seeks to develop the database system of the Saudi labor market through offering statistics with high accuracy, making information available to decision makers, planners, researchers and related entities. Additionally, the agreement in both letter and spirit emphasizes combining efforts to ensure reliable indicators for the labor and social development market that contributes to the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 and NTP 2020 as well as fulfill the Kingdom's commitment to the international organizations and G20. The agreement will ensure the furnishing of related information, survey results for the stakeholders as per their requirements along with improving the outcomes, in addition to developing and unifying the currently-used statistical classification for the labor and social development market's data. Both the MLSD and GaStat agreed to establish databases for nonprofit organizations, charities and cooperative societies, social development committees and centers, which will target every region with its rural areas, cities, administrative centers and population data, besides the number of workers as per nationalities and budget. The MOU is a bid to enhance the existing observatories, build new ones that facilitate joint work and design new statistical products pertaining to labor and social development issues that will be beneficial to decision makers and policy makers.
