MEAMARKETS / Q2 2021 5 NEWS More Saudi Arabian women were employed in the first quarter of 2021 than in the previous quarter, continuing a recent trend in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to job losses globally. According to new data released by the General Authority for Statistics on Wednesday, the labor force participation rate of the total female working age population increased during the first quarter of 2021 to reach 33.6 percent, compared to 32.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020. Unemployment rate among Saudi Arabia’s working age populations (including nonSaudis) fell to 6.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 7.4 percent during the last quarter of 2020, new data showed. The unemployment rate for all Saudi males and females, 15 years and above, fell to 11.7 percent in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 12.6 percent in the previous quarter. The unemployment rate of Saudi females also fell to 21.2 percent during the first quarter, compared to 24.4 percent in the previous quarter. For Saudi males, however the rate was a shade higher at 7.2 percent compared to 7.1 percent in the previous quarter. The unemployment rate of total male working age population in the kingdom also fell in the period to 3.7 percent compared to 4 percent in the previous quarter. For all females, the rate fell from 20.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 16.1 percent in the first quarter of this year. Saudis’ total unemployment rate is 0.1 pp lower than in the same period of the previous year, below its pre-COVID level. Raising female participation in the work force is one of the objectives under the Saudi Vision 2030. The government targeted an increase in the female labor force participation rate to 30 percent by 2030, which has already been surpassed. According to a recent Moody’s report, generating new employment opportunities for Saudi nationals, particularly for Saudi women, will likely be a key economic benefit of greater progress on the diversification agenda in the medium term. This will also be a key credit benefit for the sovereign, reducing fiscal pressures on the government to provide employment and social support for the nationals. UAE’s Etisalat announces ambitious plans to develop 6G In yet another global milestone, Etisalat today announced its foray into the next generation of the mobile network with considerable efforts towards 6G realisation, conducting research and developing international standards, the main building blocks for the 6G ecosystem. Haitham Abdulazzak, Chief Technology Officer at Etisalat, shared these insights during his address at the session titled ‘Setting the roadmap to 6G’ at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona; the annual trade show dedicated to the mobile communications industry being held from 28th June until 1st July 2021. “Advancement and development of new mobile technologies has become much more rapid than ever. Introduction of new features, capabilities and use of millimetre frequencies seen in 5G is a result of this advancement, which is expected to be complemented with terahertz spectrum in 6G. Etisalat is one of the ambitious players making steps towards the sixth generation of the network,” he explained. “The excellent achievements by Etisalat today in 5G coverage, cloud native, slicing, Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) development, AI and automation platforms, as well as high fibre penetration, which stands at more than 99 percent of UAE populated area coverage, is a result of the long-term strategy paving the way towards 6G. “We are committed to bringing the latest technologies to UAE market to enable digital societies. As part of our vision and future technology planning, 6G is going beyond earth networks into space to enable new era of services and usage scenarios with terabyte data traffic resulting in extra ordinary human to machine interaction. Etisalat is upgrading tools and capabilities of its R&D centre to enhance the contribution towards 6G global standardisation within the international fora and alliances.” The promise of 6G is in the transformation of use cases targeted by 5G into a full integrated autonomy, enabling the move from science fiction to reality, robotic humans operation, sophisticated human to human, human to machine and machine to machine relationship. The 6G technology requires agile communications governance and increased collaboration across multisector stakeholders. The technology is seen as an enabler of new coverage dimensions in space and maritime in addition to the terrestrial dimension.
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