Saudi Arabia to reduce reliance on foreign workers

Saudi Arabia to reduce reliance on foreign workers

Saudi Arabia has announced plans to reduce its reliance on foreign workers by recruiting only highly-technical workers and monitoring investments closely, reports Arab News. “The Kingdom will now be more selective in hiring foreign workers,” said Ibrahim Al-Assaf, finance minister, while giving highlights of the annual budget announced by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman here Monday. Al-Assaf said that the Kingdom had made substantial progress in training and absorbing qualified Saudi professionals and workers in different sectors. “Hence, the plan to reduce its reliance on overseas workers is quite logical,” said the minister, while pledging to facilitate implementation and completion all “projects in the pipeline like Riyadh Metro and other mega transport projects.” To this end, he said that the government has announced several measures to meet the financial shortfall because of the falling oil prices. He, at the same time, allayed fears of expatriates and rejected rumors, saying that the Kingdom has no plans to introduce individual income tax in the country. There is no intention and no plans to impose taxes on the income of expatriates. The Kingdom is home for over 10 million foreign workers.

RCom, Aircel, SSTL merger may create strong number 4

A three-way combination involving telecom operators Reliance Communications, Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Aircel would have an 3G footprint that's bigger than those of Vodafone and Idea Cellular and a likely 4G presence in eight circles, although a heavy debt burden could cripple the deal, analysts said. Anil Ambani-controlled RCom and Aircel announced exclusive 90-day merger talks on Tuesday to combine their wireless businesses under a newly listed Rs 35,000 crore entity, barely a month after RCom, India's fourth-largest carrier, and the Indian unit of Russia's Sistema JSFC announced an all-stock merger. "A combined entity could offer 3G services in 18 circles, launch 4G services on the 2300 MHz band in eight circles and hold 2G spectrum in 22 circles," Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients. Vodafone offers services in 16 circles and No. 3 carrier Idea Cellular is present in 13. The US brokerage noted that the potential combine would "breach overall spectrum caps in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir. Operators are not allowed to hold more than 25% of the total spectrum in a circle. People familiar with the matter said the new entity may surrender excess airwaves. Brokerage IDFC said the combined wireless operations of "RCom, Sistema Shyam and Aircel would have a formidable 12 per cent revenue market share, but the debt burden of both RCom (Rs 39,900 crore) and Aircel (Rs 20k-to-24k crore range) could be a possible deal breaker."

Full spectrum of bad, good for telecom

successful auction of airwaves and the launch of 4G services were the high points for India's telecom industry in 2015 even as the lingering problem of call drops and bottlenecks in infrastructure, notably on transmission towers, remained major areas of concern. Early in the year, the country saw the biggest auction of spectrum when the government garnered Rs 1.10 lakh crore ($17.6 billion) to licence 380.75MHz of airwaves in the 900MHz, 1,800MHz and 800MHz and 2100MHz bands across 17 out of 22 telecom circles. The telecom service providers that participated in the marathon auctioning were: Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications, Reliance Jio, Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Aircel.