Loans up to SR500,000 will be offered to Saudi graduates
Habib Shaikh

JEDDAH — The General Organisation for Technical Education and Vocational Training (Gotevot) would extend loans to university, institute, college and vocational graduates.

“The Gotevot will offer loans to graduates and apprentices ranging from SR10,000 to SR500,000 when they meet the conditions set by the organisation in order to encourage them to carry out their own projects and enter the labour market,” said Dr Sharif Abdul Wahab, director general of joint training at the Gotevot.

Abdul Wahab said the loan fund is financed by the private sector and semi-government banks, so there are huge financial assets and a lot of potential. He said the loans are not limited to the organisation’s graduates anymore, and added that the credit is also offered to all unemployed graduates of professional institutions to enable them to start their own businesses.

He explained that the technical organisation’s conditions should be met by graduates, and they should present their project’s idea to the Gotevot. “When the administration approves the project, it will closely follow all its stages in order to ensure its success,” he said, and added that the small scale projects department at the Gotevot is the authority which offers the loans and pursues the projects.

He said the aquaculture project carried out by the graduates in Jizan, a successful project financed by the department, sets a vivid example of the flourishing ventures proposed and carried out by investors from the graduates in Jizan.

Abdul Wahab said that the project accommodates hundreds of graduates who prefer to carry out their own businesses rather than waiting indefinitely to be employed by the government or public sector. He said that in order to attract the Saudi youth to blue-collar professions, which constitute the pillar of the development process of all advanced nations, the organisation has introduced a subject in secondary schools’ and higher educational institutes’ syllabi called ‘Vocational Culture’.

The course’s objective is to correct the misconceptions about the future of technical and vocational education already instilled in the minds of the students. The move will encourage them to seek admission in these sectors which guarantee a bright future to the graduates since they will be meeting the labour market’s requirements….

This isn’t quite the give-away of the ‘go-go 70s’, when the Saudi government offered loans for the asking, but it’s a useful shadow of it. With loans up to approximately $133,000, there is enough money being offered to give serious would-be entrepreneurs a decent change at realizing their aspirations. The loans, of course, are interest-free, though there may be other fees involved.

The program appears to have sufficient checks-and-balances to prevent outright fraud. Most important, though, is the course for secondary school students on technical and vocational work. Young Saudis need to change their views about labor, expanding the ‘acceptable’ into the broader areas of work. I hope the course is a required one.