Digital entrepreneurship: Socio-demographics and consumer behavior in Indonesia

Industrial development in any nation plays a vital role in the strengthening of the economy and employs human resources as per specifications and directly towards the mainstream of the nation. In Saudi Arabia, there was rapid industrialization for four decades. Some manufacturing industries performed well, while some internal and external business environment factors influenced the others’ performance. The study focuses on historical development, as well as recent trends of well-performing and poor-performing industries of Saudi Arabia. Small manufacturing industries in Saudi Arabia are underdeveloped and need more attention to attain sustainable and progressive growth rate in the form of the number of establishments to enjoy the potential. Manufacture of tobacco, computer, electronics and optics, pharmaceuticals and transport equipment are the deprived and underdeveloped industries of the manufacturing sector. There should be some easy credit schemes for the development of deprived or underdeveloped manufacturing industries. To attain sustainable growth and development of the manufacturing sector, a positive attitude of the government towards underdeveloped manufacturing industries, favorable labor laws, and entrepreneurial awareness, technical and financial assistance are necessary. The growth and development of the manufacturing sector of Saudi Arabia will be helpful in the attainment of goals of Vision 2030.

Saudi Arabia is well known in the world for the holy places Makkah and Madinah. Hajjis and visitors come to perform hajj and Umrah every year in Makkah and Madinah from all around the world. Hajj and Umrah visits play a vital role in the inbound tourism of Saudi Arabia. The tourism revenue of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is increasing absolutely but losing its contribution to the GDP proportionately. So, this paper tries to find out the economic activities of all components of tourism sector which are responsible for the negative trend. It also explains the relationships and variability of tourism revenues and expenditures with GDP and offers suggestions to enhance revenue of tourism sector. This study is based upon secondary data obtained from the website of SAMA (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority) and General Authority for Statistics of Saudi Arabia. In tourism sector of Saudi Arabia, the increasing trend of expenditures of some economic activities is more than its revenue. The increasing trend of expenditures comparatively its revenues lowering contribution of tourism towards GDP. To improve the level of tourism revenue, government has to provide world class facilities and develop new tourist spots and allow the visitors to visit such places according to the Shariah and Kingdom rules. Government has to focus on developing passenger rail transport and other means of transport to connect all the tourist spots to provide easy conveyance, and on improving and developing tourism sector by helping the government and private organizations that are engaged directly or indirectly in providing services to the domestic and inbound tourists to assure more contribution to GDP.

The lockdown shocks resulting from the global pandemic of COVID-19 in March 2020 brought untold economic imbalance to the financial sector in South Africa. The government’s proactive alternative measure of control to the new wave of COVID-19 must be investigated to offer policy suggestions for future economic and financial planning. Consequently, this study investigated the impact of the new wave of COVID-19 on the financial market with a special interest in the twenty JSE listed companies in South Africa. To enhance the quality in the frequency of study, daily panel data from November 2020 to January 2021 were sourced from S&P Capital IQ and Google online. The impact of COVID-19 was investigated alongside other variables that can influence the return of the stock markets on twenty JSE listed companies. The variables under investigation are daily exchange rate (dollar terms), dividend-adjusted share pricing, daily COVID-19 infection rate. Both robust descriptive and fixed effects time-variant analyses were adopted as the estimating techniques. The study provided empirical evidence that there is a direct but slow link between the daily incidence of infectious COVID-19 and returns on the stock market as key variables. This positive relationship indicates that both COVID-19 and financial activities could co-habit together to enhance greater return on the stock in South Africa. Hence, lockdown may not be most appropriate to the national economy of South Africa.