<Sources revealed that the Cabinet is currently preparing the regulations of the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Expert Council of the Cabinet, and the system is expected to be issued soon, as all financing and support agencies will be linked to the SMEs Authority. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has already decided the authority's reference to be subordinate to its departments.

The SME Authority will study the activity and capacity of the establishment and estimate its needs for expatriate labor as a first step, then the Authority will address the Ministry of Labor, which will issue the full number of visas approved by the Authority with the commitment of the establishment to achieve the required Saudization rates.

For his part, Engineer Mansour Mansour said that the SME Authority will be affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. For his part, Engineer Mansour bin Abdullah Al-Shathri, member of the Board of Directors of the Riyadh Chamber and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Riyadh Center for Small and Medium Business Development, said that there are many challenges facing the sector, especially that it is under the control of expatriate workers in a way that makes it difficult for citizens to invest in this sector.

Al-Shatri called for correcting the environment of these establishments to be a safe place for citizens to work, and for the Authority to contribute to reforming the investment environment of the sector so that citizens can invest and work in the small and medium enterprises sector, which constitutes 99% of the number of establishments in the Kingdom, and accounts for approximately 68% of the number of expatriate workers in the Kingdom, and suffers from poor profitability margins that make it unable to employ a citizen and pay him a decent wage.

Al-Shatri pointed out that there are many challenges facing the sector, especially that it is dominated by expatriate workers, which makes it difficult for citizens to invest in this sector. <Al-Shatri pointed out that the work environment in these establishments was mostly built to be a spatial environment that is not suitable for the work of the citizen, so that the only option is to employ expatriate workers only, which contributed to keeping citizens away from working in small enterprises. He stressed in this regard that although the SME sector employs approximately 68% of the number of expatriate workers in the Kingdom, its contribution to the employment of Saudis is still weak at a time when this sector in developed countries occupies the largest proportion of the national workforce in them.