Saudi king replaces labour minister, promotes culture, environment

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Saturday replaced the labour minister and set up new government bodies to promote culture and protect the environment as the kingdom seeks to modernise and create jobs for an overwhelmingly young population.

Private sector businessman Ahmed bin Suleiman al-Rajhi was named minister of labour and social development, succeeding Ali bin Nasser al-Ghafis, according to royal orders published by state media.

The royal orders set up a new Ministry of Culture, extracting it from the information ministry as part of a drive to capture more Saudi leisure spending at home amid a budget deficit caused by low oil prices.

Getting hundreds of thousands of unemployed Saudis into the workforce is a major challenge for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who oversees economic policy for the world’s top oil exporter, where unemployment stands at 12.8 percent.

The Gulf Arab state, which has struggled for years to create jobs for its nationals, aims to create 1.2 million jobs by 2022 to reduce unemployment to 9 percent, a senior labour ministry official has told Reuters.

The selection of Rajhi, who chairs the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and is the scion of an Islamic banker billionaire, follows a broader trend of tapping the private sector to fill top government posts, including the housing minister and a senior defence official.

Steffen Hertog of the London School of Economics said the move might also be aimed at rebuilding trust with the business community, which has been frustrated by the rapid pace of some economic reforms and unnerved by an anti-corruption purge last year.

Under that secretive campaign, scores of royals and top businessmen were detained for months at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh. Most were freed after reaching settlements with the government.

The reform-minded crown prince is trying to diversify the Arab world’s largest economy away from oil exports and open up Saudis’ cloistered lifestyles by easing strict social rules and promoting entertainment in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.

King Salman on Saturday also appointed Abdullatif bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al al-Sheikh as minister of Islamic affairs, call and guidance. He has previously headed the kingdom’s religious police, whose powers were curbed two years ago as part of broader reforms.