Jane Kinninmont
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you all for getting up so very early this spring morning to join us for, what I promise, will be a very worthwhile use of your time, hearing about some of the changes and developments that are underway inside Saudi Arabia. Of course, this week, we’ve had the Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, in town and that has focused a lot of attention on Saudi Arabia, primarily on its economy and, of course, on some of the foreign policy issues, the war in Yemen. above all. But it has also cast some spotlight on some of the changes that are going on in society and maybe in culture, especially when it comes to the role of women. The visit, itself, has struck a notable contrast with the last, really major, Saudi visit, which I remember when King Abdullah came here, back in 2007, and he brought a large delegation of Saudis with him, in which, I believe, there was one woman, Lubna Olayan, the renowned businesswoman, and this week has been a big contrast.
But beyond the, sort of, PR of the visit itself, there are some much deeper changes underway, which, arguably, are primarily driven by economic necessity and longer-term social changes, such as the big expansion of women’s education. Anyway, today is an opportunity to really hear about this from people who are experiencing it and, in some ways, leading some of these changes. So, we’re delighted to have Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud, who is the President of the Saudi Federation for Community Sport, and also, Lujain Al Obaid, the Chief Executive Officer of Tasamy, which is a social enterprise incubator. And then, thirdly, we will hear from Adel Hamaizia of St Antony’s College, Oxford, who will speak a bit about Vision 2030, as context for some of these social and gender changes.
Today’s meeting is on the record, and it’s being live streamed. You’re welcome to tweet and, without further ado, I will hand over to Princess Reema. Thank you so much.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
Not at all, thank you for having us and thank you for coming so early. I just want to put a little bit of context. In 2016, I was asked to join the General Sports Authority. At that time, it was the Presidency for Youth Welfare. That changed in, around March 2016, because the youth mandate was viewed to be too good and too large to sit within authority and it was dispersed amongst several ministries. My role was, essentially, to have the plan to incorporate women into sports. From February until August what we realised, through our research, is that the opportunities to expand and grow into the sports market, whether it was professionally, as an athlete or within the ecosystem, was equally as poor for boys as non-existent for girls. So, the role transitioned from Women’s Affairs to the Deputy for Planning and Development at the Sports Authority. My role there is behavioural shift, the sports economy, and also, women’s affairs, but under the diversity and inclusion mandate.
As we were working along through our mapping, again, within the sports economy, what we realised is in order to grow the professional aspects and the competitive aspects of sports, we must actually grow a grassroots activation, and that’s where the Federation for Mass Participation, which focuses on community sports, was created. My role there is to engage young people, all the way through to much older people, so we like to see zero to 99, on how can we be more physically active, more focused on our health and more engaged as a community? And the community engagement is critical because that’s where volunteering comes in and that’s where community and social reintegration happens.
Separately from that, we are the collaborator with the Ministry of Education on the physical education initiatives, both from the point of view of training PE Teachers, plus also, the curriculum, and it’s really important that I stress the lead activator on that is the Ministry of Education. We come onboard as a subject matter expert. We work with the Ministry of Commerce and Trade, in order to create the space for small and medium-sized enterprises to thrive in the sports economy.
We also work with the Ministry of Labour to create more job opportunities and namings of jobs. We work – why is that critical? Because while they existed for men, didn’t exist for women, so we’re adding those job opportunities for women, which supports, then, the economic diversity that we would like. We also work with social welfare, in order to get more young people volunteering and positively impacted by sports. A prime example of that is the Neighbourhood Football League, which, today, in all of the smaller neighbourhoods, we operate in every single city, over 300,000 young people, North, South, East and West, and that is community organised, young people from all ages, coaching, refereeing and playing in sports. We have a prime example of the Police Chief in Jizan actually called my Deputy Chairman and said, “What is it you’ve done? Because today and the last two days, over the weekend, petty crime dropped because of the engagement that we had on the Neighbourhood Football Leagues.” And that’s a huge sign, for us, that means young people are now occupying themselves with other things.
We also, when we talk about women and women’s inclusion, we’re talking about, today, about six women on the board level of federations. We are talking about 17 women, who are employed in the administration of federations. We’re talking about a value chain of female athletes that have gone to represent the nation, not just in 2012, too, at the Olympics, or 2016, where we had four as wild cards. We had 30 young ladies represent us at the Arab Women’s Tournament in Sharjah, of which, we won a silver medal and we won four bronze medals. We also have one young lady, who I’m very proud of, because she’s really pushed the limits in her sport, Dona al-Ghamdi won a gold medal for boxing in Jordan, representing Saudi. 12 months ago that wouldn’t have been a true statement. Today it is and that, to me, is symbolic of this vision and its choice.
The choices that women have today are greater than the choices they had yesterday and every day they will be greater. The cynicism, that I truly understand, is why today? How come now? And is this just for show? Is this just for the trip to the US and London? Well, it can’t be and it can’t be because I am telling you what I’m responsible for. And if it is just for show, then I should be fired tomorrow, because I’m building sustainability plans. I’m building five-year plans and I’m building growth plans, and if I can’t achieve that, my name is on the line and so is my job. So, from my point of view, what I can tell you and from what I can vouch for, is this is the new normal, but this is the new normal for today, because five years from now, once I have achieved my goal, the new normal will be different because the challenges will be different.
Jane Kinninmont
Can I follow-up with one question, which is that we’ve seen, in the past, quite a lot of resistance to sports for women, do you think?
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
Yes.
Jane Kinninmont
Things like opening gyms for women, how is the Government trying to address that and what, sort of, arguments are you mainly using for this change?
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
So, I don’t have to use an argument. What we did is we created the formal structuring for the licensing of women’s gyms in June, and what that was, is there is no such thing today as a licence for a woman’s gym, there is a licence for a gym. Your commercial registration is where you will specify is this a man’s gym or a woman’s gym? But the regulation for dumbbells, for walking machines, frankly, is no different for a man or a woman. Unless you know otherwise, but our research says it’s the same. So, we have a singular licence for a gym, however, is it gender combined? No, it is not. It is a – our commercial licenses are segregated.
Licensing of gyms was authorised because we had gyms for women. It’s not that they didn’t exist, but they operated in a grey market because they weren’t licensed as gyms, which means no regulation, which means employment was difficult. It means oversight was difficult and putting it back into the light means we now can track the businesses. Within three weeks of opening licensing for women’s gyms, we had over 500 registrants. That was in June. As of today, we have 47 live gyms. The rest are pending approval from the municipality. This is not to say it’s a perfect system, we are only in phase one.
Phase two is the full automation of the process, where we will be committing to the licences being completed within less than an hour, because it links us to about six different ministries that, you know, it must go through. That change, if we talk about 500 gyms registering, the majority of them are medium-sized. In our research, a medium-sized gym employs a minimum of eight people between the front office, back office and the actual Trainers, so that’s 8×500 immediate jobs from June, in that sector. But the indirect jobs are the training facilities that must be created, in order to train and certify PE Teachers or, sorry, Trainers in gyms in everything across the board. If you could name, for me, a fitness programme, we probably have it in Saudi, from Zumba to Pilates to yoga to tai chi, it’s there and it’s happening every single day.
What we are also doing, and if you look at the downstream of training, is the secondary and third impact is not only the training centre for these individuals, you also have the people who have to clean the floors, you have the people who have to clean the machines, you have – today, we’re trying to import even the spray that you spray on the yoga mats, so you don’t destroy that. The sports economy goes from the micro to the macro, from the macro to a double macro to the triple macro, and I’m not an Economist, so bear with me with my phrasing, but what I’m trying to convey to you is, every single step on the value chain is needed today in Saudi in every single industry, and I can just talk to you about the sports because I see it every single day. Every single day we have a need.
Women enter the stadiums. We now have female Ushers. We have female Security Guards. It means we have bathrooms that have been specially made or rehabilitated from men’s bathrooms to women’s bathrooms. Now, that’s women that have to come in and clean these bathrooms. It just keeps going. They’re not the sexy jobs, they’re not the highly attractive jobs, but they’re clear and critical jobs that are part of an ecosystem. Engineers in sports engineering, I absolutely need them male and female. Medical professionals in the sports industry, we absolutely need them. Educators, innovators, somebody needs to create an innovation. I am begging you for the bicycle seat, why not a Saudi woman? So, everything you could imagine that is necessary in an ecosystem of sports is now open as an industry to women, and that’s profound job creation. Why? Because we’re now being included in the narrative and we must be included in the future planning and mapping, and my job is to make sure that that’s a reality.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you very much, and we’ll turn, now, to Lujain to hear more about social enterprise.
Lujain Al Obaid
Thank you for waking up this early and attending this talk. I’ll go back to 2011. I was a little bit disappointed with so many promises for empowering youth and I decided that I want to empower them myself and I’ll start now. When I made that decision, I didn’t understand how I can do that and then, through exploring so many things and through my experience before making that decision, I made – I discovered the social entrepreneurship world and I found in it a tool that can be utilised to empower youth and also, to mobilise civil change and impact positive impact making in the sectors.
Once we started taking an eager view on the sectors, first of all, the third sector was dominated by an old school of thought, very traditional, they focused on urgent, instant care and support and they would never focus on development and sustainability of impact and programmes presented throughout the NGO sector, and that was a little bit challenging for me to navigate and we focus on empowering social entrepreneurship as a sector. We focus on empowering social entrepreneurs. We collaborate with the governmental and private sector.
And, for the past six years, it has been quite an interesting journey, but I think the major boost happened when our biggest support came from the Small, Medium Enterprises Authority last year and this happened because we had a direction, as a country, through Vision 2030. We – and the uncertainty we were navigating, for the past few years, suddenly became much clearer for us, because there is a direction for the whole country, for most governmental agencies, the individuals in any agency would understand the KPIs for every agency that they work for, or even other agencies that they are dealing with. So, for me, as an entrepreneur, that became so clear and obvious who to head to and who to actually pitch for, and it became very quick, and we started our social incubator for the past year, and it has been quite an interesting journey.
The interesting part was that we had over 2,300 applications over three months, over a period of three months, and most of these applications are from different cities, youth seeking mentorship and support. They’re not seeking financial support, they only need guidance in how they can establish their social enterprises and also, understand, how can they create the positive impact that they want to deliver in the country. So the change making movement is not only on a top level, it’s actually a grass movement that is going around all over the country and most of the youth wants to participate in it. And I think, for the past few months, I’ve been navigating the public advocacy field and understanding how we can create clear bylaws for social enterprises to be registered. That has been quite a challenge for us, as a non-profit. It took us two years to register ourselves as an organisation. Now, it’s much easier for non-profits to register and it takes only three weeks. But for social enterprises, to have clear bylaws that would support that sector is very much needed, and I’m working closely with the Ministry of Commerce and also, the Small, Medium Enterprises Authority to have clear bylaws for social enterprises all around Saudi.
Jane Kinninmont
Just to follow-up with one question, what are the main areas where the young Saudis want to have a social impact with these inner cities?
Lujain Al Obaid
Oh, where can we start? I think they would like to focus on environment, financial literacy, you know, empowering small, micro small businesses, in different villages, not only main cities around Saudi. I don’t think that we can limit it to one sector. There are so many different sectors that Saudi youths just want to create different solutions for, societal problems that we’re facing.
Jane Kinninmont
Fascinating, thank you. Adel.
Adel Hamaizia
Well, thank you very much, Jane, and it’s very nice to be with old friends and new friends. What I plan to do is really take us through the macro, so if we step back for a second, then I’ll dive into the micro and I’ll share some challenges of Vision 2030 and the roadmap ahead. So, back to basics. So, as you can see from the graphs just above, if you like, Saudi 101. So, Saudi’s a rentier state park, so that is to say that it derives the majority of its oil – the majority of its revenues, rather, from oil, which means this data is fiscally independent from taxation and the state. What does this mean?
It means many things, and we’ll come onto them in just a sec. It also means that the state is hostage to international oil prices, something it no longer influences, due to various developments, in the last few years. It is these oil rents, as you can see from the fiscal revenue, that bind and metaphorically ratify the social contract, that is the implicit or unwritten contract between the state and its citizens, where political acquiescence is exchanged, traded level of [inaudible – 17:20] with rents, rents that come in kind. Free healthcare, free education, sacrosanct subsidies, hither to and, of course, jobs for life, which are no longer, and I’ll come back to that.
So, the question will be, how does the rentier state adapt when it has its redistributive capacity, responsibility and ability curtailed? So, to move onto the next slide, so that’s the last few years, 2014/15/16/17 we ran consecutive fiscal deficits, so high rent years early 2010s, it was excellent. We had the $147 barrel in 2008. So what’s changed? Is there anything different about these fiscal def – these last few fiscal deficits? I mean, the fiscal breakeven price is around $80, that’s the minimum barrel that’s required to balance your books. It’s not a perfect calculation, but we use it anyway.
No, it’s not, so this goes back to the 80s and 90s, so, as you can see, King Fahd came into power, or came – well, ascended the throne in 82. Throughout the 80s and 90s we ran fiscal deficits for 16 years. Anything different about today? Just a few things. First of all, we used the reserves that we had in the 80s and 90s to fund the shortfall. What’s different today is, of course, at the height of the Gulf War, 2nd of August 1990, the population of Saudi Arabia were 16 million. Today, it’s 32 million. This has implications for jobs, implications for energy consumption.
If you add, sort of, to the last few years the disruptor, which was shale gas, which has altered global energy dynamics, the US Saudi relationship, under Obama, I’d say it’s probably the lowest point since the Obama FDR – sorry, the FDR Ibn Saud meeting at the end of the Second – or just before the end of Second World War. Underemployment, the challenge of jobs has never been greater and, more importantly, underemployment is a challenge that we need to think about. The Labour market mismatch, something that Her Royal Highness mentioned about behavioural changes, managing expectations and managing expectations on wages and what type of job you deserve. So that’s something to keep in mind. Energy consumption, one of the highest energy per capita countries on the planet, only matched or, you know, competed with by the likes of Trinidad, Norway and Qatar.
Keeping in mind these challenges there is, also, of course, a new thing, leadership. There’s a new leadership that I think we’ve all noticed, and in recent years. To help and support my point, as you can see here, Saudi Arabia’s expenditure or public sector wage bill is incredible, truly incredible. 13 – almost 13/14% of its GDP goes on Government wages and it’s bloated public sector, which is no longer sustainable, so, you know, it’s now the private sector, which must take the lead. You can also see here, millions of barrels per day oil equivalent, 2017 figures are about to come out. In terms of energy consumption, cheap blanket subsidies, which I said were sacrosanct, up until recently, injected huge waste and overconsumption, disproportionately benefited the wealthiest who, of course, drive the larger cars and run the energy intensive industries. The exacerbated pollution concern, something which is a real problem, particularly in Waly Al Ahd in Jeddah, naturally, because of the populations. Some previous estimates had energy subsidies at 10% of GDP, while Saudi Arabia consumes more primary energy than the UK and France, it’s incredible.
So, where does that lead us? So, where does that take us? It takes us to this. This is a – what I call, a social contract reconfiguration model, which aims to decrease the country’s reliance on oil and, of course, push power to the private sector. It was launched a couple of years ago. Most of us have heard about it. We know all about it. Very ambitious targets. For me, the most ambitious of the three are, on the far right, my far right, yes, the private sector contribution to GDP, so moving from 42 to 65%, which is quite incredible, by 2030. Of course, introducing non-oil Government revenues, this is very interesting. VAT is one of the things I’m going to come onto, and this would mean a renegotiation of the social contract. We hear about this correlation of representation and taxation, and there’ll be a lot of renegotiation going on, albeit, perhaps, unspoken or, perhaps, online. There is also unemployment rate, I think this unemployment rate is contentious, if we think about youth unemployment, it’s a lot higher. So managing citizen expectations will be very important.
Now, to pick up on non-oil revenue generation and to come to the micro, in a second, and the two areas, which are going to help Saudi Arabia, non-oil revenue generation and fiscal consolidation, two very important and integral parts of this contract being a shared one [inaudible – 22:12], I lost it there, and we’ll leave the Glasnost-Perestroika link for later. Now, let’s look at a few examples. So, example one, visa and expat fees and to help reach this balloon goal up there, doubled, in some instances, which was applied onto around ten million, 11 million expats. What does this do? Business competitiveness can be compromised, companies exploit employing expats, which are almost all companies, apart from the public sector, of course, business travel, so it’s, what I’d call, fiscal balancing, competing with Vision 2030, which is a paradox in terms.
Example two, the implementation of draconian traffic fines and measures, an easier sell as it is beneficial to the public and something that I’m very keen on for Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region. Car accidents in 2016 in Saudi Arabia killed 9,031 people, unbelievable. 12% of the total number of the 70,000 fatalities, and that’s practically one death an hour. So, the IDF, and that’s not the Israeli Defence Laws, but the International Diabetes Federation suggest that 50% will have diabetes by 2030. 24% of Saudis have diabetes today, and tobacco related health costs are estimated to strain the budget with over five billion Saudi riyal. And elasticity research, which has been conducted by WHO and colleagues across the pond, suggests that a 10% price increase in tobacco, for example, would reduce consumption by four to 5% and there are challenges smuggling business lobbies, and so on.
Example, and you’ve got my two-minute warning, so example five, VAT introduction, so I’m trying to give you box ticking on the VATs, on the micro. So, VAT introduction came in, just at the beginning of January, expected to raise around ten billion a year. Challenges are, of course, inflation, as many companies are passing on their admin and compliance costs to the citizen, which is a problem. The threshold is very low, in my opinion. SMEs is $100,000, it should be higher, which would allow for more SMEs to push forward. It’s a psyche changing tax, most of all. Among G20 nations, it’s the, you know, lowest taxing country around, so it’s not too bad.
I’d now like to move to the final, and most important, which is energy price reforms. So, I mentioned subsidies, energy subsidies, being sacrosanct. The most significant of all of these measures are, by far, energy pricing reform. So, if you can just look up to the graph there, in 2015, we’re at 16 cents for a premium gasoline. We moved up to 24 cents in 20 – the beginning of 2016, and just a couple of months ago 54 cents. This is the equivalent of when I get in the car and go to my Esso petrol station in North London, a £1.30 litre at around £2.90, can you imagine the pandemonium that would engender? So, gauging the price elasticity, one could call social discontent, would be very important for the Government, moving forward, from Rabat to Muscat, actually, so it’s not just relevant to Saudi and, for me, round three of the energy price hikes, we must think about and look at carefully.
Pace and sequence are paramount to success for all reforms and other constituency relevant here are energy intensive industries, a constituency that’s often forgotten. How do we cope? There are only a few options: absorption and lower price margins, passing onto consumers. If you’re an exporter, you might be a price taker, so that may play a role. See, these are – and, of course, interfuel substitution, these are things to think about.
Now, if we – I’m almost there, Jane. So, this is something which has helped, which is very important, and I commend the Government for doing this, and this is a cash transfer mechanism, and it’s conditional on your income. So, as you can see, just up there, if you earn less than 8,700 Saudi riyal, and it’s commensurate with the energy prices, you would have a net allowance of 200 Saudi riyal, ‘cause you’d get 1,200, but the estimated burden is a 1,000 – minus a 1,000 Saudi riyals and it moves upwards until you reach diminishing returns on a third quintile and on the fifth, you receive zilch, zero.
So, yeah, I mean, data’s questionable, a country which doesn’t tax its people, of course, the data’s scant, but we’re starting from somewhere and we’re moving forward. There’s a lot of trial and error going on, and it’s easy to point fingers, but stuff is happening, so I think we need to sit up and listen. I’m almost there, and now, I’d like to end with some – a couple of positives, if I may? I’m sure nobody’s going to – so, first of all, new legislation. I’m very, very, very, very, very happy to hear about the insolvency law, which is just about to be passed, very important. How can you promote entrepreneurship when you might go to prison, if you default on your loans? So that’s great. Competition law, franchise law, and it’s married with streamlining and making company registration easier. The development of Nomu, something which should have gotten a lot more press, this is fantastic, a secondary market to raise capital, equity, ten million capital requirement compared to, say, if at that one, which is a 100 million. Transparency is getting better in the Kingdom, of course, we had the November episode. But if you look at things more generally, on the budget side, amazing. We’re moving forward. There’s a recognition of past wrongs. There’s looking forward on where we’re going one the rights.
Now, finally, and I’m going to end on the female point, on a female point, on the female point, the economic implications have increased female labour force participation, you have the short-term wins, like car sales, Toyota and GM would be very happy and, of course, insurers. But there’s also the GDP growth, which might go up by 0.4 to 0.9% by 2030, which is incredible, phenomenal. We wish the Kingdom success on its path and realising as much of Vision 2030 as possible.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you very much and I think that really does illustrate that there are substantial and deep economic drivers to a lot of what is going on, on the social side. Now, we have half an hour for questions from the audience. You’re welcome to pose a question to any member of the panel, or to all of them. We’ve got roving mics, as usual. I’ll just ask anyone, who wants to ask a question, to just briefly identify themselves by name and affiliation, and we’ll start with the lady here. There’s a microphone coming to you. Thank you.
Elicia
This is a question for Princess Reema. I’m Elicia from Arab News. I’d like to know, what is the biggest challenge you’re facing with getting Saudis active? Thank you.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
The question is what was the greatest challenge in getting Saudis active? The greatest challenge is actually, not getting them active, it is upgrading and upskilling, and what I mean by that is, the facilities that we need to use, some of them have not been well maintained and we have to upgrade them. And the upskilling is, if I want them active, the programmes that must be created, I don’t have the manpower yet to actually mobilise them to the quality or the level that we would like, but it is starting. So, we’ve had to actually turn to the private sector to step up where, traditionally, on a grassroots activation, you would have the community stepping up. I can tell you, from a year and a half ago, when we first started mapping who exists in this ecosystem, it was about 120 community sports groups, so we’re now to over 200, and that means that our work is actually resonating and people are buying in.
The difficulty, which goes back to some of the things that my colleague basically mentioned was, are you comfortable if I tell you, “Please go out and activate your community sports group in the community, in a public space”? Six months ago the answer was no. We had people saying, “Could you please give me a letter of authorisation? Could you give me permission?” And what we’re saying is, “You don’t need permission to use public space, that’s why it’s called public space.” But that is an evolution, when we talk about mindset shift and behavioural shift, of how do we go back to letting the citizen know this is their nation? And we are able to measure social progress, simply because today, I can tell you, more and more people are going out and activating on the sports activations, without coming back to us as the Sports Authority.
One week ago, over 6,000 women participated in a walk in Al Ahsa, where normally, in that region, people would sit and wait and wait and wait and wait and by the time they get the letter of authorisation, we’re talking about six to eight months’ later. Self-organised, self-motivated and off they went, and it was a raging success. We had nothing to do with it, as the Sports Authority. We organised a marathon, which was a half marathon, as a pilot, to see what would it look like if we ran a full marathon, assuming we would get five to 6,000 people? We had over 30,000 people who flew in from all around the country; people flew in internationally to come and attend this. This is telling me that people have confidence in what we’re able to deliver.
But when I look a lot of these numbers that are in this phenomenal chart, sport impacts every single one of these across the board, absolutely across the board, all the way down to the annual Umrah visitors. Why? Because if I’m getting that many people coming into the Kingdom, we’re collaborating, and we just have had a series of letters that go between us and the Ministry of Tourism to say, “Have you considered a sports tourism visa?” If people are coming in for this annual Umrah from all around the world, have you thought that they may want to climb the mountains, see the sea, walk around the country and engage in the beauty of what this nation is? We cannot tell people, “Come and see us,” if we don’t let people come and see us, we can’t tell them, “Believe me, it’s great,” if they don’t see it for themselves. So, we’re working on that and we’re talking about the SMEs and we’re talking about GDP.
We’re measuring ourselves against Canada, as a role model, where we know that in Canada, for every one direct sports job, there’s two indirect. We know, for example, that the Canadian example is 40% of their employees are women in the sports sector. We know freelance and part-time, we know all of these things about what they’re doing. We also know that Canada’s very similar to us as an oil dependent state, previously, we also know that they have extreme weather, the same way we do. We also know that they were focused on a single sport, which was hockey, ours was football, and we know, today, they’re one of the most vibrant sports economies. We know the income they get. We know what they generate. The plan is there. So, what we’re saying is let’s emulate that, let’s not reinvent the wheel, but apply it to our context.
So our challenges are, today, if I want to promote bicycling, who’s repairing the bicycle? And enlightening young people that that’s actually a career you can have. But also, I was in Washington last week and a lot of the young people were saying, “You’re encouraging me to go and take these jobs and you’re encouraging me to step out of the traditional pathway and go and invest myself and my time in the sports economy, but my parents are saying no, because why would I leave KPMG or leave Johnson & Johnson or any of these larger companies, very secure jobs, secure income, and go into something that, today, has no evidence is a success?” So, I counter and say, “There’s no evidence of success in Saudi, but there’s evidence of success globally.” The sports economy is one of the most vibrant in the United States of America and North America. It is profoundly vibrant here in the full value chain, from grassroots, all the way to competitive sport, and there are job opportunities.
So, the mindset shift that we’re doing, and we are going to start seeing, within the next few months, we’re about two months away from mapping out the job value chain that we’re going to begin announcing. Why? Not just encourage young people to participate in this economy, but to appease the parental units, who have to, in our context, endorse and support this. Because no parent wants to think that, for the next 20 years, they will be financing their children’s lives. Once they’re adults, you want them to have a thriving job, but a job that has a long-term benefit, not a short-term flash in the pan. So, working, again, with the SME authorities, how do we create the correct jobs? How do we message correctly, the growth of this sector? And that’s on us and that is exactly what we’re doing.
So, that supports private sector contribution. That’s female labour. That’s unemployment. That is non-oil exports. That’s public investments. That is non-oil revenues. That’s all over there. Sports is not an athlete exclusively. The athlete is what you see at the tail end of a whole iceberg that must operate under it and that’s what’s, to us, so profoundly exciting. Because we’re coming at this with zero expectation, no baggage, we’re new and we get to go across the world and say, “Who did this best? Who’s doing what and how do we now apply this here?” We even have a study that we’re doing in April on, how do we remove people from the most vulnerable points on the poverty scale out of vulnerability, through the sports economy? Because we’ve been able to measure and map to get them out of that point, is around 800 riyals. I can do that. I can do that for you. So, allow us to have the time, as you said, to fall flat on our face a little bit, pick it back up, figure it out, because we’re trying to figure this out actively.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you. More questions from the audience. There’s a few at the front, here. If someone can bring a microphone, starting her. Thank you.
Member
[Inaudible – 35:37], a Researcher in sport and health innovation. Thank you so much for a great panel. My question is to Princess Reema. I would like to ask about how could we overcome the environmental factors that impact the fact that we are almost 58% physically an active nation, especially that you mentioned we’re comparing our model as Canada, which – where the environment is really different, in terms, especially, of climate to Saudi Arabia? How do you think this could be overcome? Thank you.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
So, we – when we talk about – if I could convey four letters to this audience. The day that my whole country starts talking about this is the day I’m going to retire, S-R-O-I, it is the social return on investment. It is a concept that I hope the whole world operates under. I learnt it from a sensational young lady called [inaudible – 36:34] from Jordan and she’s an Adviser to us at the Sports Authority. When we talk about diabetes and health crises, you have to look at the Sports Authority and any Sports Authority and also, learn from the UK experience, where Doctors prescribe physical activity. Diabetes, hypertension and obesity, three diseases that can be tackled through sports, if we have interventions with young people. It means today, we can tell you there is actually a real value. I shall not share it with you because we will be announcing it, in a couple of months, and I think the Crown Prince has to hear it first. There is actually a number that we know today, on an investment in sports, the savings in healthcare. So, again, we go back to that chart and we say expenditures, let’s bring it down. Let’s spend here to save here, and that’s a long-term strategic map, number one.
Number two, when you talk about the differences between Saudi and Canada, the reason that we’re using it as an example is extreme heat means there’s a very particular chunk of time that we cannot be playing outside, just from a health point of view for young children. Canada, extreme cold, snow, ice and adversity, but what did they do? They turned that into a sports activation, how sensational is that? Why are we not creating indoor facilities en masse, instead of malls to explore physical activity for young people? How can we invest in better environments in schools and infrastructure in schools and universities, in community centres, to allow for difficult weather play? And the answer is, we are. And here’s where I’d like to clue you in on the magic of Vision 2030. The Ministry of Education had programmes, municipalities had programmes, housing had programmes, Sports Authority had programmes, none of us knew what the other was doing. None of us was sharing a cost. None of us was sharing plans and we’re talking to the same people.
But the problem, when you have four different entities talking, but not talking to each other, it also means they’re not talking to the right audience and they’re not strategically mapping to a singular result. We are now doing that. And what happened in February of 2016 is, we were all, every Government entity, lumped together at the Khozama Hotel and said, “You have key strategic points you must hit. Women’s employment, walk away from the reliance on oil, creating more jobs, motivating the private sector, figure it out, boys and girls, talk to each other and get it done.” And we were there for eight weeks, coming up with grand plans that ended up being the Nationally Transformative Project, plus quick wins to get things moving. And what we realised is, we can cut our costs, we can cut our consultancy costs, we can cut our overheads and focus singularly on the goal. But, previously, it wasn’t a shared goal, each entity had its own entity, and there was a singular goal, and that’s the point of difference. It’s just a point of difference and it’s a different methodology. If people ask me, “Why today?” Well, at a certain point, as a nation, we were a young nation, we had to invest in infrastructure. That’s finished. We’re done now. We’re focusing on the next capital, which is human capital. It’s the next step in the evolution of this nation. It’s not for anyone but ourselves. But I assure you, as a global environment, you are the beneficiary of this focus.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you. We’ll take a question over here, please. Yes, please.
Stephane Dubois
Good morning, Stephane Dubois from the Gender and Growth Initiative at Chatham House. First of all, I’m Canadian also, so I find it very nice and very illuminating that you’re trying to compare the weather. I have a question, if you look at G20 countries, if you look labour force participation, obviously, Saudi Arabia is not doing very well. But in terms of gender pay gap, there’s not much difference between, once they get to the workforce, not much difference between men and women. Will you be able to maintain this, as you get more women in the workforce? Or do you have any measures of policy in place that would be able to do that?
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
So, specifically, within the Sports Authority, I think we can speak well on that. In general, I know that it is a goal. From what I’ve seen, across the board, it’s the goal to keep going. We didn’t start that way to go back, and I really think that what we’re trying to do, in this country, is be role models. We were role models in certain things at a certain point, but that, I think, was exclusive to the Islamic world, and what we’re trying to be, in the world of social development also, and social progress. And I know many people who are watching this on social media would say, “Social progress in Saudi, seriously?” What we’re trying to say is, “Yes, seriously,” because we’re serious about it and today is the point of difference. What more and how much louder would you like us to be about the fact that we are pivoting? What more would you like as a point of difference? So, I would say, if you’d like to measure, why don’t we wait another year to measure to say, “Is what we said in 2017 actioned? Is what we said in 2018 actioned?” But to point cynicism, in the first three weeks to one year of an initiative, is actually an irrational ask. It does not mean things are perfect or will be perfect, because perfection is impossible.
But somebody gave me a phrase the other day, in fact, two, that I’d like to share with you. Number one, ‘do not destroy the good for the perfect’. Number two, because I always get asked, “Why are you so positive and why is life so good and rosy and cheery?” It’s not good, rosy and cheery. But in the concept of the glass half full or half empty, somebody identified to me something critical. It’s a glass, it’s refillable. It’s refillable with whatever you want. Would you like it to be water? Here’s some water. Would you like it to be juice or Coca-Cola? My only advice would be, don’t put hot tea in a glass, get another glass. So, in that concept, hot versus cold, what would you like us to do? For our point of view is, we are going to keep trying filling that glass with whatever works to get our nation to hit the point of the vision, which means we will iterate and reiterate, it means we will operate in agile. But it also means there is no way to appease every single naysayer. There is no way to hit every single statistic, but there will be key measurable points of change and when those key measurable points of change have happened, it allows for more time to focus on the other things.
There’s a lot of nitty gritty details. You’re talking to us about women’s driving and you’re talking to us about the abaya and the hijab. We’re saying, as women, job opportunities. We’re saying domestic abuse. We are saying safety on the streets. We’re talking about the issues that affect us on our day-to-day life. We are talking about mobility and transportation, yes, but we’re talking, also, about guardianship. Guardianship, to you, is a taboo subject, that every time I have an interview, they’re like, “Guardianship,” as if I’m going to wilt away and wither, I’m not. It’s a conversation that every single one of us has and has been a conversation for the past 15 years, what’s the point of difference?
30 women are on the Shura Council, sorry, 30% of the Shura Council, which means a woman’s dialogue and needs are now elevated to a public sphere. It means the statement is stated and has to be stated and restated and constantly restated until it’s resolved. That’s progress, it’s not the end, it is not the resolution, but it’s progress because we’re asking for what we want ourselves, for ourselves. And what we can tell you is, we see measurable change, but does that mean it’s ended? No, because as soon as you finish this pack of things that must end, you add another ten on the other end. That’s the nature of progress because needs change.
Guardianship has gone from an iceberg that was attached to a landmass and is moving, and the only thing that satisfies a woman’s soul in Saudi is to see that it’s moving and it’s melting. But when it melts, and I made this comparison yesterday, it melts into the water and water becomes usable. What does that mean? It means these women that were held like this are now moving out and they become engaged in a part of the community in a much more viable and visible way, that’s sustainability. It is not sustainable to operate as we’ve being operating, but what we’re saying is, we’re trying to figure it out and it’s not perfect, it cannot be perfect because, frankly speaking, we all watch the news. We see what’s happening in the States, where is women’s progress? Where is it? Is it in the #MeToo movement? Did we have to go down that path? Do we have to go down that path? I don’t think so. But what can we do? We can look across the world and say, “I don’t want to emulate that, I’d like this. I don’t want to do that, I’d like this.” And when we write law, let’s write it singularly today to make it correct.
We’re studying Title IX in the Sports Authority in the US and we’re saying what words or what thoughts could have been included then, that would have changed the landscape for women today? Number one. Number two, how did it action? How was it enabled? What was the effect? How was it implemented? So we can understand. Should we use that terminology or not? Does it work for our population? What wording could we be putting in there to allow that to be a dynamic document that can evolve, versus a finite document that, once it becomes a Royal Decree, must be removed or released by another Royal Decree?
These are not conversations that were happening before, they’re happening today. But in the span of a year and a half, the movement of women’s rights is moving, but it is not an ending shift. That’s what we all have two accept. It shall not end because women’s issues won’t end because the issue today is not the issue of tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect and it can’t be, nor will we ever tell you it is. It also doesn’t mean people weren’t struggling before, and we have to honour and respect every woman’s struggle for the past 50 years in our country. We have to honour and respect that. Doesn’t mean you agree or disagree, just respect, that’s all.
Adel Hamaizia
An addendum just to, perhaps, supplement, compliment. Naturally, I don’t want to be a spoiler, but the feminisation of the workforce in Saudi Arabia will, of course, lead to an increased supply of labour. Expats and female Saudi nationals are not substitutable like-for-like and they won’t have the same expectations and we don’t have a national working, a Saudi national working class. So the reality is, there may be more stress in the short-term and, hopefully, we’ll get some of the returns on investment in the mid to long-term.
Jane Kinninmont
Let me bring in another question from the front here, from the lady here.
Member
Hi, Julie Herte, studying Masters of Law at SOAS University. First of all, thank you to all the speakers, you raised a lot of great points, and because you were speaking about the current development, I’m just quite curious, from your perspective, and whichever wishes to answer, please go ahead. So where do you think there’s an area that requires attention? That you would love that development with after and we reach perfection in certain areas, you would love to see development move on to there, maybe.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
I think I’ve bored you with my voice, so I’m going to let Lujain speak.
Lujain Al Obaid
Well, as an entrepreneur, I’ve been navigating so many sectors and it’s quite difficult to articulate a certain area that we need to focus on. But, you know, taking a step back and taking a look at the vision, we focus on three main elements: society, diversification of economy and Government and bylaws, and these are three elements that are really are crucial for any progress in any, you know, field or sector but, you know, going not only down to what I’m working on. I think, for me, as you know, an entrepreneur, a person who’s empowering other entrepreneurs and, you know, my goal was always to empower those who want to change, this has been much easier, you know, I think, since the – since 2017 until now. It has been quite a challenging experience, since 2011 up until 2016, it came with all its pros and cons and suddenly, I’m trying to take in all the empowerment I’ve been getting. At the same time, there are, I think, there’s the challenge of making the vision much more translatable to the, you know, bottom movement.
So, the Government agencies wants to empower and push things forward but, at the end of the day, the agents in these Governmental agencies are still trying to understand how they can do that. So they’re still navigating an old system and moving into a new system. And it has been very interesting to, you know, push from the top and go to the bottom and having these conversations. And, you know, I understand leadership as taking people from where they are to where they need to be, not where they want to be, because what they need and what they want is completely different things. And, you know, having these conversations in the system, whether it’s public or private in a, you know, in a room with a decision-maker, are very crucial to make things happen and move and, you know, go forward with things.
I get so many emails from so many young people every day and I go heavier every day to my bed, wondering how I can deal with my limited resources, enough to actually empower them all. And, you know, I’m really optimistic about how things are going to happen, in the next two years, but also, building on what you said, I think we need some time to make things happen. Change will never happen in 24 hours, it’s going to take some time. You need to focus on, you know, the awareness of the people and the agents who are supposed to do the work. You need to focus on having different conversations with decision-makers to make them understand what’s really going on outside the rooms of, you know, the meetings and, also, publicly speak about how things are happening, what are the opportunities out there.
Most of the young people are desperate to know how things are happening or how to do things but, at the same time, making them aware of the services and the opportunities out there is very crucial, and I think that has been something that is very different, you know, through the last year. A lot of Governmental agencies have been investing a lot and making, you know, the mass be aware of the services that they are providing, how they can get it done, how they can get it done very quickly, which is much more important, and it has been shifting a lot.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you. Time for one more question, which we’ll take from over here, please.
Stephen Ball
Hi, Stephen. Hi, good morning. I’m Stephen Ball from KPMG. First of all, thank you for name checking our firm.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
And the Sports Authority does not work with KPMG. That was not applause, just for the record.
Stephen Ball
So, you’re all amazing. The same question for all of you, and you’ve all talked about Vision 2030, and there’s 12 years left, what are you all most excited about, over the next 12 years?
Jane Kinninmont
And can I just add to that? So, this is going to be our last question, and it’s nice to have a question that goes to everybody, but what’s the number one challenge?
Adel Hamaizia
I’ve got quite a few Cs. The first one is competitiveness, so the three or four Cs that come to mind, when I think about Vision 2030, are coordination, which you mentioned, complementarity, co-operation and comparative advantage. The factors of production that have made Saudi Arabia competitive, over the last few decades, cheap energy, cheap labour. If cheap energy and cheap labour’s not so cheap anymore, married with a bit of political risk, Saudi Arabia needs to, C, communicate what its value proposition is. So, communicating internationally and locally will be very important and how you reconcile some of these non-oil, you know, generation of non-oil revenues with FDI attractiveness, will be very challenging, moving forward. But again, I think this is all about expectation management and that’s where I think I’ll leave it.
Lujain Al Obaid
I think I’ll go back to SROI, and social return of investment. I think now, we’re much more aware of where every riyal is going and how is that going to impact us, as a country, and impact, you know, the society, on a general level and also, taking it down to small societies in different cities around the Kingdom. You know, we’ve been talking about so many, you know, societal challenges, we spend a lot on the medicating programmes and medicating centres for different diseases, but we never spend on prevention programmes, which is very crucial in the health sector. We spend a lot in the educational sector but, at the end of the day, the outcomes are not really matching how much are we spending. Now, we’re much more aware of how are we supposed to develop the sector?
I think, for me, to tackle it down, I’m really much interested in seeing how the shift is going to happen and, you know, the decision-making process, in different agencies, because our Government, I think, the language of the leadership in our Government has changed. It’s shifted from something that is diplomatic into something very direct. It gave us a sense of direction. There are – there is a huge lack of uncertainty at the moment, rather than uncertainty we used to navigate a long time ago. Now we understand where are we going, how are we going to achieve that? There will be a lot of mistakes, but I’m pretty sure that there will be a lot of right things that are we doing.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you.
HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar al Saud
Okay, so I would say, I would like to see – and this is purely now because of my exposure into sports and the terminologies I’ve learned, I’d like Saudi to be based on meritocracy, not gender focuses. I don’t want to be hired because I’m a woman. I want to be hired because I’m excellent for what I do, and I have the skill and the background, as do many other women. So, meritocracy, number one, is what I would look for and, number two, I would look – I would like for the dialogue of what we look like and how we appear to no longer be the narrative. We look and sound different, but the mental capacity is equal, and I need us to get over the word ‘conservative’ linked to a woman that’s fully covered, because I have found profoundly liberal women, who are covered top to bottom, and I have found very conservative women that look and dress and behave like myself. So, if we can get over that fixation of appearance to capacity and capability, I think that would be a huge win, and that’s not on you, that’s on us. But a meritocracy is what I’d like the nation to be.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you very much. We will draw this to a close here. It’s been a stimulating and fascinating start to the day. I’m going to ask everybody to remain seated, while the speakers leave the stage, because two of us have to go off to flights immediately. But we look forward to welcoming you back soon. We’ll be doing much, much more on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, in coming months, and it just remains for us to, please, thank the speakers, in the traditional manner [applause]. Thank you.
