One-third of the GCC population of 31.7 million comes from overseas, according to a study by the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait.
The largest county of the six-nation cooperative, Saudi Arabia, has the highest percentage of indigenous population, at 75 percent, but in Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE the situation is reversed with nationals being outnumbered by expatriates by two-to-one.
In Dubai, the national population is regularly reported to be under 20% of the total population.
In a presentation to a conference in Doha looking into issues associated with foreign workers, the Arab Planning Institute’s Dr Adnan Wadie, said that he expected the percentage of foreign workers to fall over the next 10 years as the population grows from 31.7 million today to 43.5 million in 2017. Better education and training of nationals will allow them to take over jobs from expatriates, suggested Dr Wadie.
He also noted that the overall education levels of foreign workers is declining as the percentage of expats filling management roles is diluted by the army of unskilled workers entering domestic and construction industries.
Socioeconomic factors in the GCC and the home countries of expatriates are also causing foreign workers to leave the region.
A survey by
GulfTalent.com
in December last year concluded that high inflation, growing employment opportunities in countries like India and the weakness of dollar-pegged regional currencies, will drive up to six percent of foreign nationals living in the Gulf to leave and return to their home countries in 2007.
The report, titled “Pay, Inflation, and Mobility in the Gulf” claimed that high inflation has eroded much of the purchasing power and saving potential for expatriates.
“This, combined with growing employment opportunities in other emerging markets, particularly India, and the weakness of dollar-pegged regional currencies, have made the Gulf a financially less attractive destination than it has been in the past,” the survey says.
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