SAR 2.3 Billion Spent to Push Saudi Private Sector to Hire Citizens

Saudi Arabia’s Human Resources Development Fund invested SAR 2.3 billion in the first half of 2024 to encourage the private sector to hire citizens. The Human Resources Development Fund said that around 220,000 Saudi citizens benefited from its support during this period. The fund also seeks to motivate the private sector to contribute to improving Saudi employees’ skills.

This move is part of the wider policy of ‘Saudisation’, which aims to replace foreign workers with Saudi nationals in various fields such as education, telecommunications and real estate.

The overall numbers of private sector employees in Saudi Arabia reached 11.4 million last month, including nearly 2.3 million Saudis. 16,598 Saudis joined the private sector for the first time in June 2024.

As part of the Saudisation efforts, the kingdom began to localise insurance sales jobs in April, and plans to partially localise engineering jobs from July 21st. Additionally, the kingdom has restricted human resource positions to its nationals.