Resolution 60339: Audit Your Outsourcing Contract

The short answer

In short: MHRSD Ministerial Resolution No. 60339 took effect on 26 January 2026. It separates outsourcing into two regulated categories — internal service outsourcing and internal labour outsourcing — and places obligations on the establishment receiving the service, not only on the provider. Which category your contract falls into is decided by who supervises the work, not by what the contract is titled.

What this page is, and what it is not

Our companion page, service outsourcing versus labour outsourcing, explains the rule — what the two categories are and where the regulator draws the line. This page does the other half of the job: it audits a contract you have already signed, from the buyer's side of it. A comparison table, a five-question test you can run in an afternoon, a provider verification checklist, and an honest account of what the exposure costs. If you are still working out which category you are in, read the companion page first and come back.

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The two categories, side by side

Three things fall out of that table straight away.

An Ajeer permit may be required either way. We have not found an official statement settling whether every service-outsourcing arrangement needs one, so treat this as a question to put to your provider and to counsel rather than a settled rule. It is not only a feature of per-head arrangements. Qiwa's Ajeer platform lists Ajeer Contracting as a distinct service whose whole purpose is to let a provider issue permits organising the presence of its own employees at a beneficiary's worksite. If a provider's non-Saudi employees are physically on your premises without one, the wording of the contract does not save either party.

Do not expect either structure to improve your Saudization percentage. The strongest available evidence is the exception: Ajeer runs a separate security-guarding scheme whose stated incentive is counting the guard in the beneficiary establishment's localisation factor (احتساب حارس الأمن في معامل توطين المنشأة المستفيدة). A scheme built specifically to produce that result tells you the default is the opposite. None of the resolution commentary we were able to open states a rule attributing outsourced people to the beneficiary's Nitaqat count, and we have flagged the absence of an explicit official statement rather than filling the gap.

Your own compliance position gates the arrangement. Both parties must hold a valid commercial registration or professional licence, comply with the Wage Protection System and Nitaqat requirements, and neither may be classified in the Nitaqat red band. If your establishment is Red, the problem is on your side of the contract, not the provider's.

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The five-question test

Run these against the contract in front of you, and against what actually happens on site. Answer honestly rather than as the contract describes it — the regulator's test is the operational reality.

1. Who tells the person what to do on a given morning? Your supervisor, or the provider's?
2. What does the contract oblige the provider to deliver? A defined outcome with a scope of work, or a number of people for a period?
3. How is the invoice calculated? Against milestones, service levels or a fixed fee — or per head, per hour, per day?
4. Who supplies the tools, materials, PPE and the workplace itself?
5. Who carries the consequence when the work is late, short or defective? Is there a performance obligation the provider can actually breach?

Reading it. Four or five answers pointing at the provider describe internal service outsourcing. Four or five pointing at you describe internal labour outsourcing, whatever the contract is called — and that is a separately licensed activity. A split verdict is the dangerous result, because it usually means the contract was drafted as one thing and is being run as the other.

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What the rules require of you as the receiving company

The provider carries the employer obligations. You carry these:

• No work before the permit. A valid Ajeer permit must be obtained before work commences. Commencing work before permit issuance is expressly prohibited.
• Stop work when the permit ends. Where work continues after expiry, a violation is deemed to occur from the first business day following expiry — and the service provider remains liable even without direct authorisation. That does not make you a bystander; the on-site obligations below are yours, and inspections happen where the work is done.
• Keep tasks inside the registered profession. The person must perform only the role matching their work permit. Assigning tasks outside the registered profession or outside the scope of the service contract is prohibited, as is registering people under professions that do not reflect their actual roles.
• The permit names you, and only you. It cannot be used for any entity other than the named beneficiary establishment.
• Get the data on the electronic Ajeer contract. Employee data has to be recorded through it, not held informally between the two companies.
• Stay eligible throughout. Valid commercial registration or professional licence, Wage Protection System compliance, Nitaqat compliance, and not Red-banded — maintained for the whole outsourcing period, not just at signature.

If your establishment has between one and five employees, note that Ajeer runs a distinct Leasing for Small Entities service (إعارة أجير – المنشآت الفردية) for micro-enterprises borrowing a workforce from other small entities. Sources read the resolution differently on how one-to-five-person enterprises are treated, so check the route with MHRSD before relying on either reading.

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Provider verification checklist

Ask for these in writing. A provider operating correctly can produce all of them the same week.

1. Commercial registration, plus the activity licence that actually covers the scope you have bought — not an adjacent activity.
2. If the audit above came out as labour outsourcing: the MHRSD licence for that activity, valid at signature and throughout the term.
3. The Ajeer contract reference, and a permit per named person, each issued before that person first attended your site.
4. Confirmation that each permit's registered profession matches the task you are actually assigning.
5. The provider's Nitaqat band — and a check of your own.
6. Evidence of Wage Protection System compliance on the provider's establishment file.
7. Permit expiry dates, and a named person on each side responsible for watching them.
8. Written confirmation that the people on your site are the provider's own employees and have not been assigned onward from a third establishment.
9. Written confirmation of which party holds the employment relationship, and that nothing in the arrangement is intended to create one between you and the individual.

If a provider treats items 2, 3 or 8 as awkward questions, that is your answer.

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What changed and when

On the issue date. Published accounts of when Resolution 60339 was signed do not agree, and we could not settle it against an official record. We therefore state the effective date only. If a date of issue matters to your position — for a contract signed in the window, for instance — get it confirmed by counsel rather than from a reference page.

On rectification windows. No source we opened states a transition period, grace period or deadline for bringing existing arrangements into line. Legal commentary says legacy Ajeer arrangements, informal secondments and "temporary" placements should be aligned with the new framework, and stops there. One commercial advisory reports a 60-day rectification window; we could not confirm it, so we are not repeating the figure as fact. Treat existing contracts as already in scope.

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What non-compliance costs

Start with the part that is not in dispute, because it comes from the Ministry's own text. MHRSD's Penalties of the Employer – Establishments page, which reproduces Article 229 of the Labour Law and which we opened directly, sets three rules that govern every figure below:

• A breach of the Labour Law, its regulations, or the decisions issued under it attracts a fine of up to SAR 100,000, closure of the establishment for up to thirty days, permanent closure, or a combination.
• "Fines shall be multiplied by the number of persons in respect of whom the violation occurred." That sentence is the one buyers miss, and it is the reason the table below gives a unit price, not a bill.
• The penalty may be doubled where a violation is repeated.

The same page carries a separate statutory band: not less than SAR 200,000 and not more than SAR 500,000 for breaching Article 30(1) of the Labour Law. Article 30(1), in the Labour Law text published by MHRSD, provides that a natural or corporate person may not engage in the recruitment of Saudis or in recruitment from abroad unless licensed for it by the Ministry.

The reported schedule

Everything in this table comes from a source we opened and read. Nothing here is drawn from the Ministry's penalties PDF (qrar-wzary---112377.pdf): that file downloads, but its text layer is broken and no figure is machine-readable in it, so we treat it as unavailable rather than pretending to have read it.

The row that matters most to you is the first one. Most commentary on Resolution 60339 discusses the provider's licensing exposure. But the violation you as a receiving company are most directly exposed to is having another establishment's employee working on your site without the Ajeer notification. That is not a separate offence buried somewhere — it sits inside the work-permit violation. The Okaz/Saudi Gazette report on the final draft schedule states it plainly: an employer hiring a non-Saudi worker "without obtaining a work permit or notifying Ajeer Program" commits a serious violation.

Do the multiplication before you relax about the number. SAR 10,000 is a unit price. Article 229(3) multiplies it by the number of people the violation concerned. Twelve people on your site without a valid permit is SAR 120,000 on that arithmetic — not SAR 10,000 — and the Ministry's page allows the penalty to be doubled on repetition. This is also why a quarterly permit-expiry check is cheap insurance: exposure scales with headcount on site, and it accrues silently.

Where the sources disagree, and by how much. We would rather show you the disagreement than pick a number and look confident.

• The Ajeer-notification figure. The Okaz/Saudi Gazette article carrying this violation contradicts itself: its headline says SR5,000 while its own body text says SR10,000 for the same violation. We use the body figure because DLA Piper independently reported SAR 10,000 in March 2026. Treat SAR 5,000 as a live alternative reading of that 2023 draft.
• An older, higher figure. Ghazzawi Law Firm's summary of Ministerial Decree No. 92768 puts "employing an expatriate without obtaining a work permit" at SAR 20,000 for establishments of 51 or more employees and SAR 10,000 for the smallest band, applied per worker. If your establishment is large, do not assume SAR 10,000 is your figure.
• Bands or offences? Pinsent Masons reports that the schedule sub-divides fines by establishment size — 20 workers or fewer, 21 to 49, and 50 or more. DLA Piper instead presents the SAR 200,000 / 220,000 / 250,000 spread as first, second and third offence. Both cannot be the whole picture, and we could not open a consolidated schedule that settles it.
• Draft or in force? Pinsent Masons published in May 2025 while the schedule was still in public consultation, which closed on 7 June 2025. DLA Piper reported the same brackets in December 2025 as implemented. The brackets are consistent across both; their status at any given date is not.
• Reported versus statutory. For unlicensed activity the reported ceiling is SAR 250,000, while the Labour Law provision on the Ministry's own site runs to SAR 500,000. The reported figures appear to be the administrative schedule sitting inside the statutory band, but we could not confirm that relationship from an official source, so both are shown.

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If the audit comes out wrong

1. Stop the clock, not the work. Establish whether valid Ajeer permits exist for every non-Saudi person on your site right now, and what their expiry dates are. That is the acute exposure, and it is the one that multiplies. Everything else can be fixed on a normal timetable.
2. Write down what actually happens. Who instructs, who provides tools, how the invoice is built. You need the operational facts before you can decide which category applies, and you will need them again if anyone asks.
3. Put the question to the provider in writing. Ask which category they consider the contract to be, what licence they hold for it, and to produce the Ajeer documentation. Their answer, or the absence of one, is the finding.
4. Decide which category you actually want. If you need an outcome — a facility maintained, a plant operated, a site kept clean — restructure towards service outsourcing: a written scope of work, provider supervision, and pricing against delivery. If you genuinely need people working under your own direction, that is either direct hiring through recruitment, or a properly licensed labour outsourcing arrangement documented through Ajeer.
5. Redraft rather than relabel. Changing the title of a contract while the supervision and pricing stay the same changes nothing. The scope, the supervision line, the pricing basis and the performance obligations all have to move together.
6. Fix your own eligibility in parallel. Wage Protection System compliance and your Nitaqat band are prerequisites for receiving under Ajeer at all. Our Nitaqat calculator will tell you where your band sits against your activity's quota.
7. Take advice on anything historic. Whether past periods create exposure is a legal question about your specific facts, not something a reference page can answer.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Resolution 60339 apply to us if we are the client rather than the provider? Yes. The rules set obligations for the beneficiary establishment as well as the provider — supervising the work, recording data on the electronic Ajeer contract, keeping tasks within the registered profession, ceasing work when a permit expires, using the permit only for your own establishment, and maintaining your own eligibility including Wage Protection System and Nitaqat compliance and not being Red-banded.

What is the fine if our provider's people are on our site without an Ajeer permit? The reported figure for employing a non-Saudi worker without a work permit or without notifying the Ajeer Program is SAR 10,000 — but Article 229(3) of the Labour Law, on MHRSD's own penalties page, multiplies fines by the number of people the violation concerned, and the penalty may be doubled on repetition. One older law-firm summary puts the same violation at SAR 20,000 for establishments of 51 or more employees. Treat SAR 10,000 as a unit price with a real possibility of being higher, not as your total.

Our provider's people have been on our site since 2024 under an older Ajeer arrangement. Is that still valid? The rules took effect on 26 January 2026, and no formal grandfathering period was specified. Legal commentary is consistent that legacy arrangements, informal secondments and "temporary" placements should be brought into line with the new framework. No published transition period exists that we could verify, so the safe assumption is that the arrangement is already in scope.

Does an outsourced person count towards our Saudization percentage? Do not assume so. Ajeer's security-guarding scheme exists specifically to count a Saudi guard employed by a contracted security company in the beneficiary establishment's localisation factor — an incentive that would be pointless if that were already the default. None of the resolution material we opened states a general rule attributing outsourced people to the beneficiary's count, so treat the guarding scheme as the narrow exception and confirm anything else with MHRSD.

Can we receive outsourced services if our establishment is in the Red band? No. Neither party may be classified in the Nitaqat red band, and both must hold a valid commercial registration or professional licence and comply with the Wage Protection System. See our Saudization and Nitaqat page if your band is the blocker.

Our contract says "service outsourcing" but our site supervisor gives daily instructions. Where does that leave us? In the second category, on the operational facts. Supervision is the distinguishing feature: internal labour outsourcing is defined by the beneficiary supervising the person, integrating them into its operations and furnishing the tools. The contract title does not override what happens on site.

Is per-head pricing on its own a violation? No. Pricing by hours or labour rates is a characteristic of internal labour outsourcing, which is a regulated activity rather than a prohibited one. What creates exposure is conducting it without the required licence and without Ajeer documentation. Per-head pricing is a signal to check, not a verdict.

How long can an Ajeer permit run? It is linked to the service contract and may not exceed three years, or the earlier expiry of the contract. Renewals require fresh approval on the platform.

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What SCPL does about it

SCPL contracts for outcomes. Facility management, operation and maintenance, and similar scopes are delivered by our own employees, under our own supervision, against a written statement of work — which is internal service outsourcing under Resolution 60339, with the delivery obligation sitting with us. Where a company needs people employed directly on its own file, we work as a licensed recruitment partner. We do not present one of those as the other.

If this audit has surfaced something on your side of a contract, the practical work usually splits three ways: getting the establishment file, Wage Protection System position and Nitaqat band clean, which is government relations and Qiwa work; getting the scope, supervision line and pricing basis to agree with each other; and getting the provider's documentation on file. Our compliance health check covers the first of those, and the companion page on service outsourcing versus labour outsourcing sets out the underlying distinction in more detail.

If you want a second read on a specific contract, get in touch from Dammam or Riyadh.

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This page is general information, not legal advice. It reflects material published by MHRSD and Qiwa's Ajeer platform, plus law-firm and press reporting, as read on 20 August 2026. Where sources conflict we have said so and named them rather than choosing silently. For a determination on your own arrangement, consult qualified counsel or the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development directly.