The decade leading up to 2013 saw robust growth in the Kingdom’s health care sector, as profits generated during the oil boom years were invested in deepening and expanding health care infrastructure. Although Saudi Arabia’s 2016 health care budget faces considerable cuts, it is important to note that this came on the back of highest...
Saudi Arabia’s higher education sector has grown dramatically in recent years, both in the number of students and in the number of tertiary institutions in the Kingdom. In 2009 there were just 20 universities, but by 2015 this had increased to 35 and, over the same period, the numbers of new students enrolling had increased by almost 40%, from...
Bridging the gap between university and employment, and translating potential into a skill set that is in demand is a challenge faced by graduates all over the world. The OECD reports that 20% of people aged 20-24 are not employed, in school or in training. In Saudi Arabia 36.6% of this age group was unemployed in 2014, according to the “Saudi...
Saudi Arabia is a youthful country, with a third of its population under the age of 15, and in recent years the country’s leaders have invested billions of dollars to educate these young people to lead the planned transformation of the country from an oil-rich state to a diversified, knowledge-based economy. School enrolment numbers and...
For the first time in recent years the budget for education fell year-on-year in 2016, leaving ministers and officials with some stark choices about how best to spend their allocation. On December 28, 2015, the day the government’s spending plans were announced, crude oil was trading at $37 a barrel, having fallen from the most recent peak of...
Although they benefitted from more than SR220bn ($58.7bn) per year in new contracts between 2011 and 2014, according to National Commercial Bank, many Saudi construction firms have seen their margins squeezed by escalating costs in recent years. One of the greatest challenges in balancing their books has been the impact of new labour...
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