Okaz

ONE of the main challenges facing governments across the world is creating job opportunities for citizens. It is a key and sensitive point between economic policies of the governments and the citizens.

The World Bank has stated that countries in our region will face great challenges in job creation. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa need to create more than 50 million jobs with an annual growth rate of 6.5 percent to ensure political and social stability.

Increased competitiveness and a dynamic economy are essential to generate job opportunities and to distribute the fairly among all segments of society.

In the Kingdom, we need to determine priorities of promising sectors in which we can generate the biggest number of jobs.

Each sector has its own unique characteristic that is different from other sectors. This advantage in each sector is naturally different from country to country.

World Bank studies on the Arab region point out that investing $10 million is enough to generate 620 jobs in the communication sector. This number is lower somehow in other sectors.

For example, if the same amount is invested in the food sector only 500 jobs will be generated. It will drop to 450 jobs in agriculture and will further decline to 300 jobs in business and construction, 290 in tourism and 280 in education.

The lowest number of jobs generated will be in the petrochemicals sector, which can employ only 160 people with an investment of $10 million.