The largest percentage of any country's workforce is employed in the retail sector. The retail sector in the Kingdom, however, is dominated by expatriates who account for 80 percent of the retail sector's workforce. Around 1.5 million people work in the Kingdom's private sector. This sector needs to be regulated and should be the main focus of the ministries of commerce and industry, interior, labor, economy and planning. If properly regulated, it could accommodate hundreds of thousands of workers. A positive option might be establishing a council of economic and development affairs to execute this task in a united fashion. I have, over the past few years, written about this issue several times. I think the problem lies in the fact that the relevant authorities have not put forth clear-cut tasks that can be executed. In all my previous articles, I have emphasized the importance of restricting work in the private sector to Saudis. In cases where expatriate workers are needed, their percentage should not exceed 25 percent, even if the business needs to close. I think this would impact the market as the majority of businesses are registered in the names of Saudis but operated by expatriates, a concept known as tasattur. It is better to have a large supermarket that employs 75 percent Saudis than 10 grocery stores run by non-Saudis. For these steps to succeed, the authorities should introduce laws and restrict business registration certificates to big companies that can train and hire Saudis. Tasattur should be eradicated. It is only in our country and some other Gulf countries that one finds dozens of restaurants, repair shops and tailor shops on the same street, all managed by expatriates and all negatively impacting the national economy and social security.
