Saudi Arabia is rapidly expanding its Saudisation programme, moving beyond broad workforce-nationalisation targets to increasingly detailed quotas for individual professions, with requirements now ranging from 15 per cent to 100 per cent across sectors including healthcare, accounting, engineering, marketing, sales, tourism and project management.

Recent decisions reported by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) and Saudi Gazette establish localisation requirements for hundreds of professional roles, with the applicable percentage varying according to occupation, employer size, business activity and, in several categories, the minimum salary paid to a Saudi employee.

A major package from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) covers 269 professions, including dentistry, pharmacy, accounting and technical engineering. The measures are being implemented with supervisory authorities including the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Municipalities and Housing.

Healthcare quotas reach 80 per cent

Pharmacy is among the professions with the most differentiated Saudisation requirements. Since July 2025, establishments employing five or more pharmacy workers have been subject to quotas based on the type of operation.

The requirement is 35 per cent for community pharmacies and pharmacies operating within medical complexes, 65 per cent for hospital pharmacy activities, and 55 per cent for other pharmacy activities. A Saudi pharmacy employee must receive at least SAR7,000 per month to count towards the localisation percentage.

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Dentistry is also being localised in phases. The first phase introduced a 45 per cent localisation requirement for establishments employing three or more dental professionals, with the second phase raising the requirement to 55 per cent, 12 months after implementation of the first-stage framework.

Saudi dentists must earn at least SAR9,000 per month to count towards the Saudisation calculation.

Four additional healthcare professions carry particularly high quotas: 65 per cent in radiology, 80 per cent in clinical or therapeutic nutrition, 80 per cent in physiotherapy and 70 per cent in medical laboratories.

The first phase took effect in April 2025 in Riyadh, Makkah, Madinah, Jeddah, Dammam and Al-Khobar, as well as large and mega establishments elsewhere in Saudi Arabia. The second phase expanded implementation to remaining establishments from October 2025.

The minimum qualifying salary is SAR7,000 for specialists and SAR5,000 for technicians.

Accounting and engineering face higher localisation requirements

Accounting is following one of the country’s longest phased localisation programmes. The first phase began in October 2025 and requires 40 per cent Saudisation in establishments employing five or more accountants.

The programme covers 44 accounting professions, including financial manager, accounting manager, finance and accounting manager, accounts and budget manager, treasury manager, budget manager, collection manager, certified public accountant, financial controller and senior financial auditor.

The percentage is scheduled to rise progressively over five phases, ultimately reaching 70 per cent. Saudi employees counted under the quota must receive at least SAR6,000 monthly if they hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, or SAR4,500 for diploma holders or equivalent.

Professional engineering occupations are also facing a 30 per cent Saudisation quota from June 30, 2026, covering establishments employing five or more workers across 46 designated engineering professions.

The targeted occupations include architecture, power-generation engineering, industrial engineering, electronics, automotive, marine and aerospace engineering, among others requiring professional accreditation from the Saudi Council of Engineers.

Saudi engineers must receive a minimum monthly salary of SAR8,000 to meet the localisation requirement. Technical engineering professions had already been brought under a 30 per cent Saudisation requirement from July 2025 for establishments employing five or more workers in the targeted technical occupations.

Marketing, sales and procurement quotas rise

Marketing and sales have both been assigned a 60 per cent Saudisation requirement.

From April 19, 2026, private-sector establishments employing three or more workers in targeted marketing occupations became subject to the 60 per cent requirement. Covered roles include marketing manager, advertising agent, advertising manager, graphic designer, advertising designer, public relations specialist, advertising specialist, marketing specialist, public relations manager and photographer.

Saudi marketing employees must earn at least SAR5,500 per month to count towards the quota. SPA separately confirmed the increase of private-sector marketing Saudisation to 60 per cent.

The same 60 per cent localisation requirement applies to targeted sales occupations in establishments employing three or more workers. Roles include sales manager, retail sales representative, wholesale sales representative, sales representative, IT and communications equipment sales specialist, sales specialist, commercial specialist and goods broker.

Procurement has one of the highest general professional localisation requirements, with a ministerial decision issued in late 2025 introducing 70 per cent Saudisation for targeted procurement professions in private-sector establishments employing three or more workers in the relevant roles.

More sectors come under the programme

The localisation drive extends well beyond traditional professional services.

From November 18, 2026, private sports centres and gyms with four or more employees in specified occupations are scheduled to meet a 15 per cent Saudisation requirement covering 12 occupations, including sports coach, professional football coach, sports supervisor, personal trainer and professional athletics coach.

Tourism localisation entered its first phase on April 22, 2026, covering 41 leadership and specialised occupations in private tourism establishments. The implementation is scheduled in three phases: April 22, 2026; January 3, 2027; and January 2, 2028.

Project management is also moving to a higher threshold, with Saudisation in project-management professions set to reach 70 per cent from February 14, 2027. The requirement applies to private-sector establishments employing three or more people in targeted roles, including project management director, project management engineer and project management specialist.

100 per cent quotas reshape parts of the labour market

Some categories have moved to complete localisation. In April 2026, MHRSD added 69 occupations to professions reserved entirely for Saudis. Nineteen occupations were localised immediately, while another 50 were given a six-month grace period. The roles cover areas including secretarial work, translation, data entry, HR, administration and public relations.

Saudi Gazette also reported 100 per cent Saudisation of co-pilots, air traffic controllers and flight dispatchers. Airline transport pilots were initially subject to 60 per cent, subsequently rising to 70 per cent, while cabin crew/air-host positions rose from 50 per cent to 60 per cent in the second phase.

Other categories include 100 per cent Saudisation for customer-service professions, while vehicle periodic technical-inspection outlets were designed to move from 50 per cent localisation in the first phase to 100 per cent in the second.

Seven specialised retail activities were subject to 70 per cent Saudisation, while certain cinema sales roles were assigned 100 per cent localisation and specified technical cinema professions were subject to 50 per cent.

Saudi Gazette reported 100 per cent Saudisation in shopping malls, although certain occupations and businesses were exempted or assigned separate rates. Cafés and restaurants covered by the relevant exemption were reported at 50 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

The postal and parcel sector has also adopted differentiated quotas, with CEO positions in covered activities designated 100 per cent Saudi and separate requirements for senior management.

Compliance becomes increasingly profession-specific

The latest measures show that Saudisation is increasingly operating as a profession-by-profession labour-market policy rather than a single national quota.

Employers must therefore consider not only their overall Nitaqat status but also specific localisation decisions governing individual occupations, including establishment-size thresholds, salary requirements and enforcement provisions.

Saudi Gazette reported that during the first half of 2026, MHRSD inspections uncovered more than 80,000 violations relating specifically to non-compliance with Saudisation requirements, highlighting the growing emphasis on enforcement.

The direction of policy is clear: specialised, professional and managerial positions are becoming increasingly important components of Saudi Arabia’s nationalisation strategy. With quotas of 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 60 per cent, 70 per cent and even 80 per cent across professional groups, alongside several categories reaching 100 per cent, employers are facing an increasingly detailed localisation framework.

Dubai-based ports operator DP World reported a 13.1 per cent rise in first-half revenue to $12.72bn, although adjusted earnings declined as regional conflict reduced vessel traffic through its Jebel Ali operations.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation fell 5.6 per cent to $2.86bn from $3.03bn a year earlier, the company said. On a like-for-like basis at constant currency, revenue rose 4.1 per cent while adjusted EBITDA declined 8.3 per cent.

DP World said growth across its logistics, marine services and international ports and terminals businesses helped offset lower activity at Jebel Ali.

Total gross container throughput fell 5.7 per cent to 42.83 million twenty-foot equivalent units during the six months, compared with 45.44 million TEUs a year earlier.

On a like-for-like basis, the decline was 4.9 per cent.

Excluding Jebel Ali, throughput rose 5.4 per cent to 39.68 million TEUs, or 6.5 per cent on a like-for-like basis, supported by growth across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Americas.

Jebel Ali remained fully operational and sustained no physical damage, DP World said, although the conflict in the Middle East temporarily reduced vessel traffic. The company said it had expanded inland connections and introduced other measures across its regional network to keep cargo moving.

Group chief executive Yuvraj Narayan said adjusted EBITDA excluding Jebel Ali increased 9.7 per cent.

“We continue to maintain a disciplined focus on capital allocation, cost management and operational efficiency,” Narayan said.

DP World plans to develop two terminals in Fujairah under a 50-year concession, extending its UAE gateway network beyond Jebel Ali. The terminals are intended to give cargo owners alternative routes and reduce the country’s dependence on a single maritime gateway.

The company invested $1.5bn across its global portfolio during the first half and maintained its full-year capital expenditure forecast of about $3bn.

Investment will support new capacity and trade infrastructure in the UAE, Britain, India, Saudi Arabia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

DP World said uncertainty surrounding global trade was likely to continue in the near term, but maintained a positive medium- to long-term outlook, citing its international portfolio and expanding logistics operations.

The entrepreneur turned art patron on building The Epochal Collection outside the New York–London axis and why conviction, held longer than others can stomach, is the only real edge, in art as in markets.

For most of the very wealthy, art is a receipt, a validated name, bought at a validated price, hung as proof of a net worth. Neel Khokhani finds that model not just uninteresting but backwards. The riskiest trade in the room, he argues, is buying consensus at the moment it is most expensive.

Khokhani is an entrepreneur turned patron, a son of the Gujarati mercantile diaspora who built two companies without a dollar of outside capital before turning the same instinct on the art world. Through The Epochal Collection, run out of Dubai, he backs the artists the establishment has yet to reach, women, indigenous narratives and the voices of the Global South, on the conviction that their work is underpriced by a distribution gap, not a quality one. He calls himself a patron rather than a collector, and measures success not by mark-to-market but by whether an artist’s practice deepened because someone believed in it early.

He believes that legitimacy in art is conferred by a small, geographically concentrated apparatus clustered in two cities — and that Dubai, a genuine crossroads of the Global South, offers a clearer view of what actually matters than the New York–London echo chamber ever could. He spoke to Gulf Business about worth versus validation, the canon as a market artefact, and the quiet ambition behind a collection built entirely outside the gate.

You operate in a world of entrepreneurship, art, and finance, where status and gatekeeping are the currency. Yet you’ve built your collection around the opposite: celebrating voices the establishment ignores. Where does that contrarian conviction come from?
I’d push back gently on the word contrarian, because it implies I’m reacting against something. I’m not. I’m Gujarati. I come from one of the great mercantile diasporas, a people who for generations left home with nothing, settled wherever opportunity was, and built enterprises from the outside in.

When that’s your inheritance, you don’t grow up believing the people sitting inside the institution are the ones who decide what has value. You grow up knowing that value is something you recognise and back yourself, often long before the establishment shows up to agree. Worth and validation are two different things, and the gap between them is where everything interesting lives.

So this was never shaken out of me by a single event. It’s the lens I was handed. I then spent two decades building companies that nobody underwrote, and the art simply runs on the same operating system: back the thing that’s real before the room agrees it’s real.

Most collectors play it safe. You’re betting on artists the market hasn’t validated and narratives the establishment has buried. Where does that fearlessness come from entrepreneurial risk-taking, moral conviction, or something else?
It isn’t fearlessness. It’s a different reading of where the risk actually sits. The market thinks the safe move is buying a validated name at a validated price. To me, that’s the riskiest thing you can do, because you’re buying consensus at the moment consensus is most expensive. You’ve imported everyone else’s conviction and paid a premium for it.

I built two businesses without a dollar of external capital. That teaches you that conviction is only worth anything when you hold it before the crowd does. The entrepreneurial instinct and the moral one aren’t separate here. Patronage, backing a person whose work you believe in, early, when it costs you something — is both an act of judgement and an act of belief. I’d rather be wrong on my own conviction than right on someone else’s.

You’re deliberately building outside the NYC–London establishment. Is Epochal a business investment, a cultural statement, or both? And if both, how do you measure success when those pull in different directions?
Both, but patronage leads and the financial dimension follows. I’m a patron, not a collector. I’m career-stage agnostic, and I buy the artist and the idea, not the trophy.

You’re right that the two can pull apart, and I refuse to pretend they don’t. So I don’t measure success by mark-to-market. I measure it by three things. Did the artist’s practice deepen because someone believed in it? Did the institutions eventually arrive at the work I arrived at first? And does the piece still hold me years after the purchase? If a work appreciates but fails all three, I consider it a failed acquisition. If it never appreciates but the artist’s voice matters more because of the support, that’s a win. The financial return, when it comes, is the byproduct of being right early, not the objective.

Most collectors use art as a trophy for wealth. You’ve rejected that. What changed in how you think about collecting, and when did you realise the gatekeepers were wrong about whose work matters?
The trophy model is fundamentally about the owner, not the work. The art is just a receipt for a net worth. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

What changed for me was understanding that the canon is a market artefact, not a meritocracy. The names everyone treats as self-evidently important became important through a distribution machine: a handful of galleries, fairs, critics and museums clustered in two cities. That’s not a talent filter; it’s a distribution filter. The talent was always everywhere. The access wasn’t. The day that clicked, the question stopped being “who does the establishment rate?” and became “whose work is undeniable that the establishment simply hasn’t gotten to yet?” That’s a far more honest question, and a far more interesting one.

You back underrepresented artists, women, indigenous narratives, global voices, at a time when their valuations are a fraction of established names. Walk us through the thesis: where are these artists in 10 years?
The thesis is straightforward. These works are underpriced because of a distribution gap, not a quality gap. The market follows institutional validation with a lag: things like museum acquisitions, biennial inclusion, serious scholarship, and right now the institutions are actively rewriting the canon to include exactly the voices that were peripheralised. The scholarship is moving faster than the prices.

So my view isn’t that these artists will be re-rated because of a trend. It’s that the work was always significant, and the apparatus that confers “significance” is finally catching up to reality. Where are they in ten years? Many of them will be in the permanent collections and the art-historical conversation, and the entry point that exists today won’t. But I’d rather you held me to the patronage standard than a price target. I’m not running a fund off this. The re-rating is the consequence of the conviction being correct, not the reason for it.

Why Dubai? The Gulf lacks the institutional weight of London or New York. What does being outside the traditional capitals let you see that the gatekeepers miss?
Distance from consensus is an informational edge. It’s true in markets and in art. Sitting inside the New York and London echo chambers, you mostly see what those chambers have already decided to look at.

Dubai is a genuine crossroads of the Global South. The human and capital flows of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East all pass through here. From this vantage point, the artists and narratives that those two cities treat as peripheral are simply central. They’re the work that’s around me. So I’m not straining to be inclusive. I’m reporting honestly on what the world actually looks like from a place the old map drew as the edge. The gatekeepers aren’t missing these voices because they’re hostile to them. They’re missing them because of where they’re standing.

You support artists like Kent Monkman, whose work challenges Western narratives. How does that conviction shape your acquisitions, and where is it taking the collection?
What I respond to in an artist like Monkman is that he doesn’t decorate around the colonial canon. He occupies its own forms and turns them inside out. He paints history painting, the most authoritative European genre, and uses it to re-narrate who holds the power and whose story gets told. That’s not protest art. It’s a reclamation of the machinery of legitimacy itself.

That’s the filter for me. I want work that re-narrates power, not work that merely depicts a subject. It runs through the whole collection: migration and decolonial identity, women’s interiority, ancestral time set against the digital frontier. Where it’s taking me is deeper into that territory, toward voices that hold the long memory of a people in one hand and the technological present in the other. The collection isn’t a set of objects. It’s an argument about whose stories the future will be built on.

If you could compel the art world to change one thing – who gets collected, how art is priced, or who decides what matters – what would it be? And is Epochal your answer to that?
Who gets to decide what matters. The other two problems are downstream of it. Right now, legitimacy is conferred by a remarkably small, geographically concentrated apparatus, and merit has to route through it to be seen. I’d decouple the two, and let significance be determined by the work and the communities it speaks to, not by proximity to two postcodes.

And yes, Epochal is a small proof of concept for exactly that. One collection can’t reform an industry. But it can demonstrate that you can build something coherent and serious entirely outside the validating institutions, and that the gatekeepers were never actually necessary to recognise great work. If enough people build that way, the gate stops mattering. That’s the quiet ambition.

As traditional asset classes get more volatile, are you seeing more capital move into art and collectables as alternative investments? What’s driving it?
I should be clear about my seat. I run a family office, and I’m a patron, not an art advisor with a client book, so I’ll speak to what I observe rather than pretend to a vantage I don’t have.

Yes, the flow is real. In a world of fiat debasement, sticky inflation and volatile beta, capital looks for stores of value that aren’t correlated to the screen — things like real assets, scarcity and passion assets. Three things are driving it: genuine diversification demand; the financialisation of the category through fractional and securitised platforms that lowered the entry barrier; and a generational handover where wealth wants meaning, not just yield. But I’d add a caution most won’t.

Art is a poor liquidity instrument, and the investment case is routinely oversold. The honest version is that it’s a real asset that happens to be beautiful, not a beautiful thing that happens to be a great trade.

What makes art a compelling investment, and how do you separate lasting value from market hype?
Lasting value has an institutional substrate beneath it: serious scholarship, museum interest, a defensible place in an actual art-historical conversation, real scarcity, clean provenance. Ask the simple question — why will this matter in fifty years? If the answer is about the work and the artist’s position in the story of art, that’s value. If the answer is about momentum, you’re looking at hype.

Hype has a signature: social-media velocity, prices set by flippers rather than collectors, a vertical run with no institutional validation underneath it, and an artist whose market is bigger than their body of work. Those works are priced on attention, and attention is the most mean-reverting asset there is. Durable value is slow, boring and underwritten by people who write catalogues rather than chase auctions.

What are the biggest misconceptions first-time buyers have, especially those coming in with financial rather than aesthetic motives?
The biggest is the liquidity illusion. They assume they can exit when they want, at the market price. You can’t. The spread is brutal, and the timeline is measured in years. Second, they confuse names with returns — a blue-chip name bought at the top is a worse holding than a real work bought with conviction. Third, they ignore the carry: insurance, storage, transport, handling, the auction house’s double-sided take. Fourth, survivorship bias — they see the headline sales and not the enormous base of work that went nowhere.

The deepest misconception, though, is that art can be treated as a passive financial asset at all. The moment you buy it purely as an instrument, you tend to buy badly, because you stop exercising the only judgement that actually protects you, which is whether the work is any good.

Advice for those looking to invest in art and get it right?
Buy what you’d be content to own forever if it never appreciated a dollar. That single rule eliminates most bad decisions, because it forces real conviction rather than borrowed conviction. Then do the work: primary-source diligence on the artist, the gallery, the provenance, the institutional trajectory. Don’t buy from auction headlines. Build relationships with the galleries and the people who actually know the practice.

Collect a thesis, not a shopping list. A coherent point of view compounds in a way that a scatter of trophies never will. Concentrate where your conviction is highest and ignore the secondary-market casino. And be patient to a degree that feels uncomfortable. The returns, when they come, are the reward for being early and being right, not for being clever or quick. In art, as in markets, the edge is conviction held longer than other people can stomach.

AD Ports Group shares surged nearly 15 per cent on Monday after L’IMAD launched a bid to take full ownership of the Abu Dhabi-listed ports and logistics giant.

The shares climbed to Dhs5.86 in early trading, up 14.9 per cent from their previous close of Dhs5.10, according to Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange data shortly after 11am UAE time.

The sharp move followed an announcement by L’IMAD, a sovereign investor of the Government of Abu Dhabi, that it intends to make a voluntary conditional cash offer for all AD Ports Group shares it does not already own.

The offer, being made through L’IMAD’s wholly owned subsidiary ADQ, values the remaining shares at Dhs6.25 apiece.

ADQ already owns 75.42 per cent of AD Ports Group, meaning the proposed transaction is effectively an offer to buy out the company’s remaining minority shareholders.

Even after Monday’s near-15 per cent share-price jump, AD Ports was trading below the proposed Dhs6.25 offer price.

Shareholders offered premium

L’IMAD’s offer represents a 23 per cent premium to AD Ports Group’s previous closing price of Dhs5.10.

It is also 25 per cent above the company’s one-month volume-weighted average price of Dhs5.02 and 31 per cent higher than its three-month VWAP of Dhs4.76.

The Dhs6.25 offer is also 95 per cent above the Dhs3.20 subscription price at which shares were issued ahead of AD Ports Group’s listing on the ADX in February 2022.

L’IMAD said the offer would give AD Ports shareholders an opportunity to realise “certain and immediate value”.

The intention to make the offer was announced on the ADX on Monday. Full details, including the terms and conditions of the transaction and its timetable, will be published in an offer document in due course.

The proposed deal remains subject to regulatory approvals.

AD Ports Group has grown beyond its core ports operations in Abu Dhabi into a major international player spanning logistics, maritime, shipping and trade.

Advisers appointed

L’IMAD has appointed Rothschild & Co Middle East as financial adviser for the tender offer.

Emirates NBD Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank have been named joint-lead receiving banks, while Emirates NBD Capital and FAB will act as joint-lead managers.

EFG Hermes UAE has been appointed co-lead manager, with Allen Overy Shearman Sterling serving as legal adviser.

L’IMAD describes itself as a sovereign investor of the Government of Abu Dhabi managing a portfolio of domestic and international investments across public and private markets.

Pilgrims holding multiple-entry Umrah visas must complete a series of service, digital and travel requirements before each visit to Saudi Arabia, with visa validity alone not exempting them from booking required services, according to the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah.

The ministry said pilgrims must comply with regulations covering service packages provided by licensed Umrah service providers. It clarified through its X account that holding a valid multiple-entry visa does not remove the requirement to arrange other services needed for each visit.

Service package comes first

The multiple-entry Umrah visa, launched by the Ministry of Hajj in July, allows beneficiaries to enter the kingdom multiple times during its 365-day validity period from the date of issuance. The total stay is limited to up to 90 days throughout the visa’s validity.

Read more-Saudi Arabia launches one-year multiple-entry Umrah visa

The move is aimed at providing greater flexibility in planning visits and performing Umrah, a Saudi Gazette report said.

For each visit, pilgrims must purchase a service package from one of the approved service providers through the “Nusk” system. The ministry said the package’s duration must not exceed the remaining period available on the visa.

Pilgrims must also comply with regulations governing the duration of the programs and services provided to them.

Nusk permit required before arrival

The ministry added that pilgrims using the multiple-entry visa must obtain an Umrah permit through the Nusk app before arriving in the kingdom.

The dates on the permit must match those of the approved service package. Pilgrims must also fulfill all applicable travel and entry eligibility requirements before making the journey.

This makes the process a sequence of connected steps: arranging the service package, obtaining the permit and ensuring travel eligibility before departure.

Travel eligibility and entry recording

For the initial visit, the ministry said the process begins with purchasing a service package through one of the available providers on the Nusk platform. The pilgrim then submits a visa application and completes its processing with the relevant authorities.

Before boarding the aircraft, travel eligibility is verified. Once the pilgrim arrives in the Kingdom, entry details are recorded. Those details are then updated upon departure, including calculation of the remaining stay period.

Planning around peak times

Pilgrims are also being encouraged to plan their visits and rituals in advance to help avoid crowded periods.

The General Authority for the Care of the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque said crowd density in the Mataf and Masaa varies during the day. It said density is low from 10:00pm to 4:00am and from 9:00am to 4:00pm, moderate from 5 am to 8 am, and high between 5 pm and 9 pm.

The authority urged Umrah pilgrims to use available digital services and monitor live crowd-density indicators when selecting suitable times for their rituals.

For multiple-entry pilgrims, advance preparation therefore remains central to each visit, from arranging the required service package and securing the Nusk permit to meeting travel eligibility requirements and ensuring entry and departure details are properly recorded.