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White Lands Program to Register More than 20 Million SQM of Developed Lands in Riyadh

The Saudi Minister of Housing attends the launch of the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition in Riyadh (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Saudi Minister of Housing attends the launch of the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition in Riyadh (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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White Lands Program to Register More than 20 Million SQM of Developed Lands in Riyadh

The Saudi Minister of Housing attends the launch of the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition in Riyadh (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Saudi Minister of Housing attends the launch of the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition in Riyadh (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Saudi Arabia’s White Lands Program will register in 20 days more than 20 million square meters of developed lands in Riyadh.

The program expects that the new inventory will provide about 60,000 plots of land with an average area of 350 square meters, which can pump hundreds of thousands of housing units into real estate in Riyadh.

During its participation in the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition, the program indicated that Riyadh acquired the largest share of the total undeveloped raw lands registered in the program, with about 100 million square meters of land that is currently being developed.

The White Lands Program seeks to increase the supply of developed lands in a manner that achieves a balance between supply and demand, the availability of residential lands at reasonable prices, the protection of fair competition, and the reduction of monopoly.

The Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing, Majid bin Abdullah Al-Hogail, inaugurated on Thursday the Maskan Real Estate Exhibition, which will be held over four days, with the participation of a number of real estate developers, exhibitors, and experts in real estate affairs and financing agencies.

The exhibition saw the signing of seven agreements between the ministry’s real estate development body and a number of real estate companies, in addition to the launch of five funds that would provide about 5,000 housing units.

Al-Hogail pointed to great efforts to increase the supply of new residential units and lands, with the aim to cover the current and future demand for housing by 2030.

The minister said that the number of factories working in the real estate sector increased by 31 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2021.

The Maskan Real Estate Exhibition will display the best options and solutions for the beneficiaries through financing offers from banks and financing agencies. The forum seeks to facilitate home ownership procedures and provide solutions and products to increase the real estate supply, especially in Riyadh. The exhibition witnessed the signing of a number of partnerships and agreements in the real estate development sector.

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US Labor Market Slows Despite Job Adds in May

Commuters cross Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, during the morning rush hour. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
Commuters cross Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, during the morning rush hour. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
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US Labor Market Slows Despite Job Adds in May

Commuters cross Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, during the morning rush hour. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
Commuters cross Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, during the morning rush hour. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

The United States added 139,000 jobs in May, more than expected but pointing to a labor market that continues to slow.

The employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics exceeded forecasts for about 120,000 payroll gains but marked a decline from the revised 147,000 jobs added in April. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, remaining near historic lows.

Stocks surged at Friday's open, with all three major indexes gaining about 1%.

In return, US government borrowing costs climbed as investors anticipated the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates higher for longer, making it less attractive to hold US debt.

The BLS report showed job losses in the federal government continued to pile up, with that sector shedding 22,000 roles in May alone.

The federal workforce is down by 59,000 since January, largely due to sweeping cuts by the Trump administration and multibillionaire tech executive Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency project.

Even as the economy continued to add jobs at a relatively steady clip last month, the report showed other signs of a weakening labor market.

The ratio of employed workers to the total population fell to 59.7%, its lowest since the pandemic.

An alternative measure of unemployment that includes “discouraged” workers, or those who have stopped looking for work, returned to a post-pandemic high of 4.5%.

But President Donald Trump cheered the numbers, posting on his Truth Social platform Friday morning: “AMERICA IS HOT! SIX MONTHS AGO IT WAS COLD AS ICE! BORDER IS CLOSED, PRICES ARE DOWN. WAGES ARE UP!”

Trump had urged Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to slash interest rates by a full percentage point.

“Too Late' at the Fed is a disaster!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

In reality, employers added 212,000 jobs in November, unemployment was at 4.1%, the 12-month average of hourly pay gains have softened from nearly 4.2% then to 3.9% in May, and both the labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio were slightly higher.

Only consumer prices have meaningfully cooled, ticking down from an annual inflation rate of 2.7% in November to 2.3% in April, the latest month with available data.

Analysts at Capital Economics called the May jobs report “not as good as it looks.”

Still, they wrote in a note Friday, “it shows that tariffs are having little negative impact” and added that the Federal Reserve is likely to continue holding interest rates steady “while it assesses the effects of policy changes on the economy.”