The Saudization rate for accounting professions in the Saudi private sector rises to 50% on 27 October 2026, the second phase of Ministerial Decision 103108 dated 26 January 2025. The obligation applies to every establishment employing five or more workers in accounting professions, and the rate is computed at entity level, not branch level.
Phase one — 40% — took effect on 27 October 2025, ending the nine-month grace period that followed the decision. What makes phase two different is that establishments which cleared 40% by the narrowest margin will fall out of compliance automatically on 27 October without a single employee changing.
Key highlights
- The rate is 50% of total headcount in accounting professions within the entity, effective 27 October 2026.
- Scope: establishments employing five or more accountants among the targeted job titles.
- 21 targeted job codes in the decision's table, from financial manager (121101) to finance clerk (431201).
- Wage condition: a Saudi accountant does not count if the wage registered with GOSI, the contributory wage, falls under SAR 6,000 for a bachelor's degree or equivalent, or SAR 4,500 for a diploma or equivalent.
- Accreditation condition: an accountant without professional accreditation from the Saudi Organization for Chartered and Professional Accountants (SOCPA) is excluded from the rate entirely.
- Independent of Nitaqat: the decision and its penalties apply regardless of the establishment's Nitaqat band. A green band is no protection.
- Accounting offices are excluded from this decision; their rates are computed under the implementing regulation of the Accounting and Auditing Profession Law issued by Ministerial Decision 658 dated 14/11/1442H.
All five phases
| Phase | Effective date | Rate | Establishments covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 27 October 2025 | 40% | Five accountants or more |
| Two | 27 October 2026 | 50% | Five accountants or more |
| Three | 27 October 2027 | 60% | Five accountants or more |
| Four | 27 October 2028 | 70% | Five accountants or more |
| Five | 27 October 2029 | 30% | Three or four accountants, with 70% continuing for those with five or more |
The targeted professions
The decision does not address only those carrying the title "accountant". It names 21 job codes in the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations:
Financial manager (121101), accounts manager (121102), tariff accounts manager (121103), treasury manager (121104), budget manager (121105), audit manager (121106), internal audit manager (121107), collections manager (121113), treasury director (121116), cost accountant (241102), financial controller (241106), internal auditor (241103), accounts clerk (431101), accountant (241101), financial budgeting specialist (241107), tax accounts specialist (241108), chartered accountant (241105), tax officer (335202), accounts assistant (331301), inventory control specialist (241109), inventory controller (331302), finance clerk (431201).
The presence of "inventory controller" and "accounts assistant" on that list means the denominator the rate divides by is wider than most HR departments assume.
The official worked example
The procedural guide works through an establishment with 23 accountants across the various titles:
- Total accountants: 23
- Rate required in phase two: 50%
- Result: 23 × 50% = 11.5
- Rounded to the nearest whole number: 12
So an establishment with nine countable Saudis must replace three non-Saudi accountants with Saudis to reach 12. Note that the guide rounds 9.2 down to 9 in its phase-one example and 11.5 up to 12 in its phase-two example — rounding is to the nearest whole number, and a half rounds up.
Where the breach actually happens: three systems that must agree
This is what separates this decision from other localisation decisions. A Saudi accountant does not count merely for being Saudi and working in accounts. Three conditions must hold simultaneously across three different data sources:
- The job title registered with GOSI must be one of the 21 codes.
- The contributory wage must be at least SAR 6,000 for a bachelor's degree or SAR 4,500 for a diploma.
- The SOCPA professional accreditation must be active.
The ministry states that monitoring is fully automated: the system applies the formula to the job titles held in the GOSI database, then verifies wages and professional accreditation through technical integration with the supervisory bodies.
The practical consequence is that an establishment can compute 52% on a spreadsheet and actually sit at 43%, because two accountants let their accreditation lapse and a third has a registered wage of SAR 5,800. Nothing in the payroll report flags this, and the establishment discovers the gap only after the breach has occurred.
You can size the hiring gap in the Nitaqat calculator by entering 50 as the required rate — bearing in mind that the denominator here is the accountants alone, not the whole establishment. Anyone building the calculation in code will find this decision's own rules — the phase brackets, the job codes and the three countability conditions — in the accounting Saudization quota engine in TypeScript, and the separate Nitaqat maths in the Annex 1 Saudization engine.
Three things that catch establishments out
The job title will not save you. The guide states that the decision applies to job titles and to the work the employee actually performs. Assigning the duties of a localised profession to a non-Saudi worker "directly or indirectly under any other job title" is an explicit breach that triggers the penalties.
The higher rate prevails. Where an accounting profession is targeted by an earlier or later decision at a different rate, the higher rate applies.
Nitaqat is not enough. The decision applies at entity level regardless of the establishment's Nitaqat band — as does the 70% Saudization decision for project management professions effective 14 February 2027. An establishment is bound by both tracks at once, and can sit in green under Nitaqat Motawar while breaching both professional decisions.
Penalties
Where the required rate is not met, the localisation-breach penalties set out in Ministerial Decision 75913 dated 19/05/1445H and Ministerial Decision 44558 dated 03/04/1446H apply, subject to any amendments made to them.
What comes next
Establishments have under two months to 27 October. The first step is not hiring but reconciliation: pull the job titles registered with GOSI, compare them against internal titles, then test every Saudi accountant against the two wage floors and their accreditation status. The number that comes out of that reconciliation is your real number, and it will usually not match the HR spreadsheet.
After that it becomes a data question rather than a hiring question: where the job title comes from, where the wage comes from, where the accreditation status comes from, and how the three are read together before every hire and every resignation. Establishments that connect their HR and payroll systems to the Qiwa platform know their rate before the ministry does, not after.
If you need this reconciliation built to run automatically rather than as a spreadsheet refreshed once a quarter, talk to us for a free diagnostic session — we will review your data sources and identify where the numbers break.