16 / 64
Key Economic Indicators
The Saudi economy has benefitted
from strong but steady growth.
Financial policy, supported by the Saudi
Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA)
has been directed at avoiding economic
overheating and absorbing surpluses into
productive investment, most obviously in
the state sector.
In the last quarter of 2013, economic
growth reached an annualised rate
of 5 percent, which eased in the first
quarter of 2014 to 4.7 percent. This
slight drop-off was due in no small
measure to the clampdown on illegal
foreign workers. There had been a trend,
long-combatted until now with limited
success, for expatriates to cease working
for their authorised employers and take
work illegally elsewhere. There had
also been a growth in the issuance of
false work permits in scams concocted
between foreign labour agents and
locals. The full extent of this abuse
only became apparent when a campaign,
twice extended, to allow expatriates to
regularise their papers, saw the deporting
of approaching a million expatriates.
These people, the majority of them
employed in retail, service industries
and construction not only represented
an economic drain through the billions
of dollars they sent home each year,
but they were also holding jobs that
Saudis ought to have been doing. They
also, by staying and working in the
Kingdom illegally, exposed themselves to
exploitation by unscrupulous agents and
employers.
16