Evaluation Of Saudi Arabia's Development Planning: Direction And Implementation Problems
الملخص
Saudi Arabia's development has advanced along three
dimensions: economic, social and institutional. In the economic field it meant
advances in basic infrastructure and in economic diversification. In the social
field, the development plans emphasuzed free education to upgrade skill
levels. The institutional dimension has seen the establishment of new
agencies to coordinate the expansion of the country's absortive capacity. In
spite of the benefits achieved through planned development, key issues
remain unresolved: industriial development lacks intersectoral linkages,
suffers from acute idle capacity, and tends to use an inappropriate kind of
technology; Agricultural output is high cost; the labor market is distorted by
politically-oriented government intervention; the markets for inputs and
products are artificial depending only on availability of government oil
reveneus; there is a growing excess supply of university graduates- relative to
the capacity of industry to generate jobs to absorb them productively; the
private sector continues to be overshadowed by the dominart role of the
public sector in all economic activity; and planners have been unable to
move closer to a consumption-production balance in both, the internal and
the external sectors of the economy.