15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Saudi Arabia

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■15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Saudi Arabia

• Elena Holodny

Fahad Shadeed/ReutersSecondary students sit for an exam in a government school in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia's been front and center the past few months.

The oil-rich kingdom pushed OPEC, the 12-nation oil cartel, to keep oil-production activity up to put price pressure on other major oil producers like the Iran, Russia, and the US.

Aside from the oil story, there are many more behind-the-scenes facts about this Middle East powerhouse that many people don't know.

We've got them here.

About 100 camels are sold in the capital of Saudi Arabia every day.

Flickr

Loading camels heading to Saudi Arabia.

The capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, has a large camel market. About 100 camels are sold every day.

Source: Random History

80% of the labor force in Saudi Arabia is foreign.

Saudi Arabia's labor force is about 8.412 million — but 80% (or about 6 million) of those people are considered nonnational. Most of these people work in the oil and service sectors.

And right now, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, is working hard to reduce unemployment of Saudis.

Source: CIA Factbook

Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field has enough reserves to fill 4,770,897 Olympic swimming pools.

Saudi Aramco

The Ghawar oil field.

Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field is the largest in the world. It has an estimated 75 billion barrels of oil left.

An Olympic-size swimming pool can hold 660,253.09 gallons of liquid.

Source: US Energy Information Administration

Saudi Arabia's annual military expenditure is more than three times the GDP of Afghanistan.

By Al Jazeera English on flickr

Saudi Arabia's military expenditure was at $67 billion for 2013 — an increase of 14% from 2012. This puts Saudi Arabia in fourth place for military expenditure, behind the US, China, and Russia.

Out of the top 15 biggest military spenders, Saudi Arabia has the highest military spending as a share of total GDP.

Afghanistan's GDP is $20.7 billion.

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Saudi Arabia is six times the size of Germany — but almost all of it is desert.

Flickr

Saudi Arabia is the 13th-largest country in the world, and the second largest in the Arab world (behind only Algeria) at 830,000 square miles.

However, 95% of the country is considered to be desert or semi-desert, and it has some of the largest desert areas including Al Nafud and Rub al-Khali. Only 1.45% of the land is arable.

Germany is 137,847 square miles in size.

Source: Maps of the World

Saudi Arabia is building the world's tallest building, which will be 1 kilometer tall (aka taller than 492 Lebron James's standing on top of each other.)

Smith Gill

The Kingdom Tower.

Saudi Arabia is building Kingdom Tower, which will be the world's tallest building in 2018. It's going to stand 1 kilometer tall.

(China is also planning on building a 1 km tall building, so technically speaking the two will be tied for first place.)

Lebron James stands at 6' 8" or 2.03 m.

Source: CNN

The expected cost of the Kingdom Tower's construction is 38.4 times the amount Will Smith made last year.

Flickr

The Kingdom Tower is expected to cost $1.23 billion.

Will Smith reportedly earned $32 million from June 2013 to June 2014.

Source: The Huffington Post

Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are forbidden to drive.

REUTERS/Mohamed Al Hwaity

Women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.

"The conservative Islamic state has no written ban on women driving, but Saudi law requires citizens to use a locally issued license while in the country. Such licenses are not issued to women, making it effectively illegal for them to drive," according to Reuters.

Additionally, over approximately 54.4% of women are unemployed, signifcantly higher than the male unemployment rate of 20.8%.

Bill Gates criticized the Saudi Arabia's female employment at the World Economic Forum in 2007. When one person asked him if Saudi Arabia might become a major, competitive economy by 2010, Gates responded, "Well, if you're not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you're not going to get close to the top."

Source: Reuters 

Saudi Arabia may end executions by beheading because there's a shortage of swordsmen in the country.

Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters

"This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements," stated the a Saudi committee composed of representatives of the ministries of interior, justice and health.

Source: Ahram Online

47% of Saudi Arabia's population is under the age of 24.

Fahad Shadeed/Reuters

Over a quarter of Saudi Arabia's population is under 14 years old, and almost half of the population is under 24 years old.

Source: CIA Factbook

Saudi Arabia's petroleum sector makes up 45% of GDP — which makes it greater than the total combined GDPs of Iraq, Morocco, Rwanda and Tonga.

REUTERS

Ali Ibrahim Naimi, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

Saudi Arabia's petroleum sector is 45% of the country's total GDP — which puts it at around $335.372 billion.

Iraq's GDP is $222.879 billion, Morocco's GDP is $104.4 billion, Rwanda's GDP is $7.451 billion, and Tonga's GDP is $466 million.

Source: CIA Factbook 

Saudi Arabia's health expenditures are 4.5 times the GDP of Sierra Leone.

REUTERS/ Mohamed Alhwaity

Saudi Arabia's health expenditures are 3.7% of the GDP.

Sierra Leone's total GDP is $4.9 billion.

Source: CIA Factbook

Saudi Arabia is 14.5 times larger than Bangladesh in size, but Bangladesh's population is almost 6 times as large.

AP/AMR NABIL

Bangladesh's population is around 166,280,712, while Saudi Arabia's population is only at 27,345,986.

Over 80% of Saudis live concentrated around cities — leaving lots of land sparsely populated.

Bangladesh is way smaller in size at 56,980 square miles.

Source: CIA Factbook

Saudi Arabia is building six "economic cities" that are expected to add an amount 3.5 times as large as Kenya's total GDP to Saudi Arabia's GDP.

Hasan Jamali / AP

In an effort to diversify its economy (instead of only having a huge oil sector), Saudi Arabia is building "six economic cities" that are expected to add $150 billion to the country's GDP.

The cities are spread around the country and are expected to add 1.3 million jobs and raise the GDP per capita from $13,000 to $33,500.

Kenya's GDP is $44.1 billion.

Source: OECD

In 2012, over 3 million Saudis and people from outside of Saudi Arabia went on Hajj — that's like taking the total combined populations of Phoenix and Philadelphia and putting them in Mecca.

REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

Muslim pilgrims pray around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca .

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims go to Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage — one of Islam's five pillars of faith.

In 2012, 3.16 million people reportedly went on Hajj — with approximately 1.7 million of them coming from outside of Saudi Arabia.

Phoenix's population is around 1.513 million and Philadelphia's is around 1.553 million.

Source: The Huffington Post

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/interesting-facts-saudi-arabia-2015-1?op=1#ixzz3Ng5YeYNt