RIYADH – Remittances by expatriate workers in the Kingdom have gone past SR420 billion ($112 billion) during the past four years, according to analysts at Western Union. Additional statistics indicate that 25 percent of all remittances to countries in the Middle East and North Africa region come from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Al-Riyadh Arabic daily reported Sunday. According to the IMF, the remittances of workers in Saudi Arabia to overseas countries had surpassed $194 billion during the period 2000 to 2010, and forecasts for the current year will exceed $26.67 billion. Money transfers to countries abroad during the same period registered a 182 percent increase while the cumulative outgoing remittances from Saudi Arabia by expatriate workers during the period 2000 to 2010, compared to the GCC countries, reached 45.9 percent. Economists stressed the importance of containing the flow of capital through numerous regulatory and legislative steps that would contribute in creating vast employment opportunities to Saudi nationals and reducing the dependency on imported labor. They stressed the importance of government and official authorities to create investment alternatives for foreigners so as to localize money through the issuance of more facilities in the stock, real estate and investment markets in the industrial sector through which a big percentage of graduates from technical institutes and colleges can be employed. Khaled Al-Jawhar, Managing Director of Al-Jawhar Investment Company, said the rise in the volume of foreign remittances from the Kingdom is a result of the large number of foreign workers in the local market who send their savings to their countries in different parts of the world. Al-Jawhar said the most important step to deal with money transfers by expatriate workers is to increase the number of technical and technology centers in all regions of the Kingdom and not focus on the big cities only. This would contribute in increasing the number of Saudi graduates from these institutes who can join the labor market and help in replacing expatriate workers in the technical and vocational fields. In turn, this will decrease the number of expatriate workers as well as their remittances to overseas countries. Dr. Salim Ba'ajajah, Professor of Accountancy at Taif University, added that the increase to SR420 billion in remittances by expatriate workers to their countries in four years reflected negatively on the Saudi economy. The bulk of this capital should have been contained within the Saudi economy in stocks or real estate, among the most prominent and promising investment venues in the Saudi economy, he added. – SG
