‘Poor Saudis’ is not a term you see often in the Western media; they are largely ignorant of the fact of dire poverty in the Kingdom. This shame, while secret to most of the world, is very real for the large number of Saudis living below the poverty line, however, 18.9% of them.

This Arab News story reports on a major effort to reduce poverty across the KSA, starting with the most economically-blighted regions of Jizan, Madinah, and the Northern Border Province. With ‘extreme poverty’ being defined as incomes less than SR 1,700 ($453.00)/month, the inequality is indeed deep. So much for the stereotype of ‘rich Saudi’!

Massive plan to fight poverty gets under way
P.K. Abdul Ghafour | Arab News

JEDDAH: Saudi authorities have embarked on a massive plan to reduce the Kingdom’s poverty rate to 13.3 percent by the end of this year. They hope the poverty rate could be further reduced to 2.2 percent by 2020.

Abdullah Al-Moaiqel, secretary-general of the National Strategy to Combat Poverty, said a number of programs have already been introduced to fight poverty across the Kingdom.

“A family that cannot meet the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, housing, education and health, is considered extremely poor,” Al-Moaiqel said. He estimated the number of Saudi families living in extreme poverty at 35,000 or 1.63 percent of the total Saudi population. They live on less than SR1,700 a month. There are 409,000 families who spend less than SR3,800 a month and they represent 18.9 percent of the population, he explained.

… According to a study, Jizan province has the largest number of poor people in the country (45 percent) while Qassim has the lowest (eight percent). The Jizan Economic City was planned as part of the government’s strategy to fight poverty and achieve balanced growth in all parts of the Kingdom.

Jizan has the largest number of people living under extreme poverty (9,700 families), followed by Riyadh (4,100 families), Asir (4,000), Madinah (3,500), the Eastern Province (3,200) and Makkah (3,185), the study said.
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