Saudi minister urges economic reform to spur growth

Saudi Arabia faces a race against time to expand its oil-dominated economy and create jobs for a rapidly growing population, its trade minister told an economic conference.
Minister Hashem Yamani said the Gulf state needed to create more competition, promote efficiency and streamline bureaucracy to achieve that growth.
"Time is not on our side," he told the three-day conference that began on Saturday, adding that the issue becomes more challenging every day.
The world's biggest oil exporter is trying to diversify its economy away from oil dependence and create jobs for a fast-growing population.
The potential Saudi male labour force - those over 15 either employed or looking for work - could double to 4.8 million by 2010, one minister said this week.
Yamani said momentum had built up recently in the kingdom, which has embraced cautious reform under de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, to address economic challenges, but it needed to quicken its decision-making and then act faster.
"On many issues we take an unreasonably long time to implement our decisions," he said, citing what he called an ambitious government privatisation programme now barely underway.
"The implementation phase could be greatly enhanced when the government publishes a timetable, tentative as it may be, for completion of the privatisation programme."
Yamani, who is leading Riyadh's efforts to join the World Trade Organisation this year, said his country had seen a lull in the volume and frequency of foreign direct investments.
To lure that investment back, government agencies must relax demands on new businesses and simplify regulations, he said.
Yamani told the conference on ways to achieve speedier growth that Saudi Arabia needed to address contradictory economic goals.
Government rules demanding firms employ a set proportion of Saudi nationals - part of efforts to "Saudi-ise" an economy sustained by mainly expatriate labour - could conflict with attempts to stimulate the economy.
Economy and Planning Minister Khaled al-Qusaibi told the conference Saudi Arabia aimed to double real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025.
GDP rose 6.4 percent last year to 791.9 billion riyals ($211.2 billion), but the impressive increase owed much to a fortuitous combination of high oil exports and world prices.