Supporting the national development, GaStat launches more than 45 new statistical products including economic, social, demographic, and Omrah statistics. In addition to other statistics related to labor market, energy, knowledge, environment, culture, sport, entertainment, security and safety. 

GaStat president, HE Dr. Fahad bin Sulaiman Altekhaifi appreciated the government support to the statistical sector in Saudi Arabia. In a press conference held by GaStat in its headquarter in Riyadh, Dr. Fahad said that the royal decree which was issued one year ago for the purpose of transforming the central department of statistics to be an independent general authority has given the statistical sector a total support from all entities. What has been announced today is just a result of this support which contributed in creating a proper environment to provide and publish a wide range of statistical data and information, so that they collaborate in supporting the decision making. He asserted that the announced products are considered outputs of the statistical transformation in Saudi Arabia. All the products have gone through a productive journey that began with evaluating   this stage and determining its need of statistical products which collaborate in supporting the developmental policy makers. The journey continues with enhancing the work within the principals of the statistical transformation program which depends mainly on the authority's vision and mission that stressed on the authority's position, making it the most distinct and creative statistical reference which supports the economic and social development in Saudi Arabia by providing updated, accurate, comprehensive, and credible products and services according to the best international standards and practices, in addition to being a leading entity in the statistical sector development  to support decision making. He added, in this stage of the journey, we relied on three essential dimensions; the products quality, concentrating on clients, and activating the statistical sector. Depending on these dimensions, the authority  used six tracks represented in reformulating the authority's tendencies in order to meet the objectives and reflect the clients' needs, reevaluating current products and services, determining the operating activities that are required to provide products and services according to the client needs, enhancing the authority's' technical  part, reforming culture and developing statistical awareness, in addition to working within an organizational structure and statistical methodologies and operations' governance frame. Once we make sure that the new statistical product is compatible with this vision, we make sure that it is being issued according to the standards that the authority specified as a main stage in the production journey. 

During the press conference, Altekhaifi revealed that the most important standards of the statistical production is the product significance in fulfilling the local needs such as issuing statistical products that suit the 2030 vision indicators, indicators that support the resolution of a specific government entity within the national development frame, regional requirements like improving the labor force survey form according to a unified methodology for GCC countries, or international requirements such as environment, culture, and health statistics which were indicated in the sustainable development goals approved by the United Nations. The second standard of statistical production is the importance of improving or developing a current statistical product which requires modifications that fulfill current needs to reflect new outputs supporting policy and decision makers in many fields. After subjecting the new products to these standards, they go through the stage of designing and experimenting with related entities through the mutual team works and continuous workshops before launching to make sure that the statistical product outputs have met all the requirements. Finally, the products go through the stage of constant improvements and launching according to the evaluation processes. So, the statistical production journey becomes a constant process that guarantees achieving the authority's essential objectives which support development. 

On the other hand, Dr. Fahad assured that all the announced products represent the primary stage in the process of launching new products. They will be followed by many products, which the authority already works on. All these products fulfill the users' needs and are outputs of the collaboration that the authority made with many entities as being the technical supervisor of the statistical sector. The authority wanted all data producers and users to collaborate in improving the statistical product starting from building the product to publishing it , this can be done through many important steps; documenting the collaborative relation using memorandums and agreements with many entities in order to activate data and information exchange and integration via available databases. Furthermore, building new indicators that meet the needs of development and Saudi vision.  So far, the authority has signed around (18) agreements and memorandums. Moreover, it has organized many workshops in which it meets more than (90) entities including ministries, and authorities, government institutions, universities, and research centers. Each workshop discussed a different subject related to a specific sector, considering the authority's statistical products and services essential bases that support all national development resolutions and provide policy makers with the information that are considered a cornerstone in the developmental work.

The list of new statistical products that have been announced by GaStat today included: economic statistics: real-estate Index, GDP per capita Averages (quarterly), non-profit bodies serving households in GDP, total saving for 2016 second quarter, trade balance, non-oil exports to GDP ratio, Kingdom's oil exports, trade propensity imports and exports, the volume of foreign direct investment by investor's nationality, the volume of foreign direct investment by economic activity, foreign partner contribution in share capital in private sector, Industrial Production Index (IPI), Core Inflation Index, small and medium-Sized Establishments' contribution in GDP by economic activity, and volume of tourism expenditure by economic activity. Other statistics are related to child's health and children's mortality, in addition to statistics related to Umrah performers. Furthermore, there are statistics related to labour market which includes: private sector worker productivity rate, employee's wage rate by different variables, woman's contribution in labour market ratio, number of employees in all sectors and economic activities, and number of job seekers registered in Hafiz and Jadara by number of variables (age, gender, administrative region and education status). The list also included new statistics for energy that includes: generated electricity amount and productive efficiency, number consecutive years for natural gas production, rate of energy (natural gas) extracted from aggregate natural gas reserve, rate of energy (oil) extracted from total crude oil reserve, electricity consumption per capita, petrol consumption per capita, rate of electricity generation capacity by used technology, number of consecutive years for crude oil production, and LPG consumption per capita. There are also statistics for knowledge that includes: mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, mobile cellular telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, and fixed-broadband internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Moreover, there are new statistics about environment, atmosphere, climate, air quality, accumulation of waste and pollution. These include: collected household waste per capita, percentage of industrial waste (Aljubail) and way of disposal, percentage of Kingdom's reserves' areas incensement, industrial waste volume and percentage, volume and rate of freshwater consumption by sectors, ratio of exported volumes to total desalinated water produced by Saline Water Conversion Corporation. Ratio of desalinated water to total freshwater available for use, percentage of extracted or produced water from freshwater by source, percentage of treated waste water to total freshwater for households, ratio of non- renewable groundwater to  total freshwater, differences in precipitation annual rate, and number of station recording temperature 40°C. The list also includes culture statistics: Photography, radio and Television, newspapers and magazines, fine arts, public libraries, festivals and exhibitions, museums, archaeological sites, natural heritage, and performing arts. Moreover, there are statistics related to sports and recreation. In addition, the list includes statistics about security and safety: number of road accidents according to a number of variables, number of injured persons due to road accidents, number of deaths due to road accidents, number of licensed vehicles, number of driving licenses.

GaStat will publish all results on its official website www.stats.gov.sa which allows access to all details of the products including methodologies used and results in different forms.​