Unemployment seen rising in Gulf

[LahoreEstate]

KUWAIT CITY: Unemployment among Gulf nationals is expected to rise after years of decline due to the impact of the global economic crisis on the oil-rich region, a Kuwaiti bank said. Fiscal constraints would likely prevent governments from creating jobs for new entrants into the labour market and the private sector’s ability to create jobs would be curtailed by the economic downturn, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) said in a report on Wednesday. “Overall, 2009 looks set to represent a challenging year for private sector employment,” the report said. Due to the huge windfall from oil revenues in the past five years, public and private sectors in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) created a large number of jobs for both nationals and expatriates. Based on 2007 data, a total of 14 million people were employed in GCC countries, of whom 18 percent or 2.5 million were nationals and the rest foreigners, the report said. The public sector employed about 1.8 million people, 80 percent of them nationals. The public sector also accounted for 58 percent of all nationals employed and the private sector the remaining 42 percent, NBK said. The GCC comprises of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The unemployment rate among nationals was cut to 3.2 percent in 2008 from 3.6 percent in 2007, NBK said. The private sector accounted for the lion’s share, with employment in the sector rising by an average of eight percent annually from 2003-2007, and rising just 2.9 percent in the public sector. “The acute deterioration in the regional economic outlook in 2009 however is expected to partially diminish these achievements and pose serious difficulties for the Gulf labour markets, unless further solid government measures are put in force,” NBK said. Available evidence suggests that the reduction in the number of employees in the private sector is growing in UAE and to a lesser extent in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it added. afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg5_14