<The Cabinet approved the organizational arrangements for the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises in preparation for its transformation into a body with legal personality, enjoying financial and administrative independence, whose board of directors is chaired by the Minister of Commerce and Industry. The Cabinet decision stipulated that the activity of nurturing small and emerging enterprises in the Saudi Credit Bank, the secretariat of the Coordinating Council for the SME sector from the Saudi Credit Bank, and the activity of the National Center for Small Enterprises in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry will be transferred to the Authority. The activity of financing small enterprises will be transferred from the Saudi Credit and Savings Bank to the Industrial Development Fund, and will be specialized in SME financing programs or guaranteeing their financing. While the Saudi Credit and Savings Bank and other government agencies will continue to practice all their activities related to small enterprises.

Engineer Mansour Mansour submitted a letter to 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, thanked the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, His Highness the Crown Prince and His Highness the Deputy Crown Prince for the royal approval of the organizational arrangements of the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises.

<It is planned that the Authority will work as a single institutional umbrella that integrates the efforts of various governmental and private entities to support the SME sector, whose establishments constitute more than 99% of the number of commercial establishments in the Kingdom, especially since this sector generates two-thirds of new jobs at the global level, while its contribution to the employment of Saudis is still weak despite the fact that the SME sector employs nearly 68% of expatriate workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The sector also suffers from the lack of women's interest in investing in it, as men constitute more than 96% of its owners, and the importance of the sector stands out in that it constitutes the financial resource for a large segment of citizens, whose numbers exceed one million and seven hundred thousand citizens, most of them in the age range of 40-55 years and the qualification of most of them secondary school certificate or less.