RIYADH – The Shoura Council passed on Tuesday a proposal asking the Ministry of Labor to facilitate Saudization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Kingdom, said Assistant President of the Council Fahaad Al-Hamad. The Council session was chaired by its Deputy President Muhammad Al-Jafri. SMEs in Saudi Arabia represent almost 93 percent of total enterprises and account for about 25 percent of total employment. The Labor Ministry earlier pointed out that expatriates manage more than 340,000 SMEs in the Kingdom, and that these small and medium projects, which represent 35 percent of SMEs, have not employed a single citizen. The Council also asked the ministry to make available the required facilities, especially transportation, so as to ensure safe working environment for women, which would help boost stability of women employees in the private sector. It called on the ministry to support a tripartite social dialogue among the parties involved in this sector. It also called for creating a mechanism binding for private sector firms to set up labor committees. The Council called the ministry to follow up the activities of the licensed recruitment companies and offices and ensure their proper functioning in various regions of the Kingdom, in addition to reviewing their cost of recruitment. A survey conducted in September by the Oxford Economics titled “SMEs: Equipped to Compete” revealed that small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia are gearing up for a technology-fueled expansion drive across the region. To become more competitive and help drive job creation in the region, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the Kingdom's SMEs have either completed, are undergoing, or are planning a business transformation, the survey said.
Of those, about two-thirds (65 percent) are planning to enter new geographic markets, nearly double the global average of 37 percent. In three years, no SME in the Kingdom expects to be operating solely in the country, whereas the number operating in six or more countries will rise from 16 to 41 percent, it said. About 31 percent of SMEs said they use cloud computing, but that is projected to skyrocket to 54 percent in three years – a growth rate of 72.4 percent. In addition, 37 percent said they used mobile technology now – a figure set to rise to 53 percent in three years. The importance of social media is also on the rise with 37 percent currently using it, and 43 saying they will use it during the next three years.
