RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is planning to hire around 700 new employees over the next five years, as it ramps up its presence in the kingdom, it was announced on Wednesday.
At the end of the first quarter of this year, KPMG Al Fozan & Partners had 1,200 employees Saudi Arabia, of which around 500 were Saudi nationals, the company said.
Abdullah Al-Fozan, the company’s chairman in Saudi Arabia, said in a press release that the tax and advisory firm “is witnessing record growth in the kingdom due to the increasing demand for its services by both the private and public sector, with a particular focus on Advisory.”Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, introduced a 5 percent value-added tax (VAT) on January 1, in a bid to generate alternative sources of income and reduce the governments’ dependence on revenue from hydrocarbons.
Last year, Trefor Murphy, CEO of Dubai-based recruitment firm Cooper Fitch, forecast that the introduction of VAT would create thousands of new jobs across the Gulf.
“We talked about 5,000 jobs being created. I would now suggest that is a significant understatement,” Murphy told Zawya in April 2017.
