For years, Saudization was something a company managed as a single number. You knew your Nitaqat band, you knew roughly how many Saudi employees kept you green, and you hired to that number.
That approach no longer works, and the reason is that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development stopped legislating by headcount and started legislating by profession.
The professions, and what they now require
These are the decisions employers ask us about most often. Percentages apply to the employees in that profession, not to the company overall.
- Accounting — 40%, rising 10 points a year to 70% by October 2028, where you employ five or more accountants
- Accounting, smaller firms — 30% from October 2029, where you employ three or four
- Procurement and supply chain — 70%, where three or more employees sit in twelve covered roles
- Marketing — 60%, with a minimum salary of SAR 5,500, from three workers up
- Sales — 60% from April 2026, from three workers up
- Engineering — 30%, minimum SAR 8,000 and Council of Engineers accreditation, across forty-six professions where you employ five or more
- Administrative support — 100%, for any establishment with one or more workers in sixty-nine covered positions
Read that last one again. For the listed administrative roles, a single non-Saudi employee is one too many.
Why the arithmetic changed
Under the old approach you could be comfortably green overall while every accountant, every buyer and every administrator was an expatriate. Profession-level quotas close that gap. You can now be green on paper and non-compliant on three separate professional decisions at once.
There is a second change that removed the cushion: the yellow band was eliminated in April 2026. There is no longer a warning tier between compliant and non-compliant. You are green or you are red.
What red actually costs
The consequences are operational rather than financial, which is what makes them serious:
- new work visas blocked
- work permit renewals blocked
- ineligible for government tenders through Etimad
- your expatriate staff free to transfer sponsorship away from you without your consent
- the general manager's residency extension blocked, which then blocks commercial registration and licence updates
That last chain is the one that ends conversations. A blocked GM iqama eventually stops you renewing the CR, and a lapsed CR stops almost everything else.
Two things that catch people quietly
Contract documentation on Qiwa. Nitaqat now leans on what is documented in Qiwa. An employee whose contract is not properly recorded may not count the way you assume, and the first you learn of it is a band you did not expect.
Professional accreditation. Several of these decisions require accreditation as well as nationality — the Saudi Council of Engineers for engineering roles, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties for clinical ones. A Saudi hire without the accreditation does not satisfy the requirement.
What to do about it
Map your payroll to professions, not departments. The decisions are written against job titles as classified, and "operations" is not a profession. This is a half-day exercise that tells you where you actually stand.
Look ahead on accounting specifically. A 10-point annual climb to 70% by 2028 is not something you solve in the last year. If you employ five or more accountants, this is a three-year hiring plan, and it starts now.
Check the minimum salaries. Where a decision sets one — SAR 5,500 for marketing, SAR 8,000 for engineering — a Saudi employee paid below it may not count toward the quota.
If the numbers are impossible, restructure honestly. For some professions, outsourcing the function to a licensed provider is a legitimate answer where hiring is not. That is one of the reasons companies place their bookkeeping with us rather than employing a team they cannot localise.
Percentages, minimum salaries and effective dates above were correct when written and do change. Confirm your own position on Qiwa, or ask us to check it, before you make a hiring decision on the strength of it.
Question about this?
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