Doing Business In KSA? Sending Employees To KSA? Not Without A Licence!

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ("Kingdom") is one of the largest economies in the Middle East and a market which has attracted more and more activity in the past six years. Often businesses will seek to explore the market through a partner or a third party with which employees are placed and through which they seek to operate in the Kingdom.

Such operations will more often than not fall foul of KSA legislation designed to prevent a non KSA entity using a KSA entity's trade licence to do business in the Kingdom. Over the past three years, we have seen the KSA authorities clamp down on activities they regard as harmful to the economy and in breach of legislation.

In 2013 a six month immigration amnesty resulted in millions of individuals correcting their status, and thousands being deported for illegal working (For more information click here).