KARACHI: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia has approved a new law that grants citizenship to highly skilled foreigners in the Shariah, legal, medical, scientific, cultural, sport and technical fields.

The royal decree was made in support of achieving the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 goal to create an environment that will attract and retain exceptional creative minds to the Middle East country, as the nation moves away from dependence on oil.

The citizenship will be granted to a limited number of people and will be through nomination based purely on public interest and there won’t be any option to submit applications.

The kingdom hopes that this will attract top world-class professionals to vital sectors such as medicine, industry, energy, agriculture, geology, space, aviation and artificial intelligence.

The country first announced its plan to give citizenship to foreigners in 2019, when Crown Prince Mohammed unveiled Vision 2030.

The Saudi Arabian government platform Saudi Project tweeted in 2019 that with this new citizenship law, it aims at attracting scientists, intellectuals and innovators from around the world, to enable the kingdom to become a diverse hub that the Arab world would be proud of.