The Saudi cabinet has approved granting the Saudi Accreditation Committee independence, rebranding it as the Saudi Accreditation Center (SAC).
Such a move is set to widen the horizon and reinforce the center’s performance and works.
SAC is a new platform aimed at increasing quality control for services and products offered in the Kingdom, contributing more to achieving the objectives of Kingdom Vision 2030.
It is expected to contribute indirectly to achieving four of the first level targets for Vision 2030: Developing and diversifying the economy, enhancing government effectiveness, enabling a healthy living, and increasing employment rates.
Over the past years, SAC has been responsible for the policy-making process when it comes to accreditation regulations, as well as the granting, renewing, freezing, withdrawing, expanding and limiting accreditation for certification-issuing third parties.
Saudi Trade and Investment Minister Majid bin Abdullah Al Qasabi noted that the SAC rebranding and structural shakeup will aid the Kingdom in taking longer strides towards completing a reliable and impartial national quality-regulation infrastructure with international recognition.
“Independent accreditation is an essential step in the right direction to avoid conflicts of interest, ensure the integrity of national infrastructure activities for quality, and gain international recognition,” Qasabi said.
Qasabi also affirmed SAC will indirectly contribute to developing and diversifying the economy and enhancing institutional efficiency.
This follows SAC successfully accomplishing digitization for all its accreditation activity, which has contributed significantly to enabling beneficiaries, residents and committee members to access the Commission's services, complete accreditation procedures and follow-up online.
This has significantly reduced the period of processing from an average of 260 days, when the system is introduced in 2016, to 175 days in 2018.
The national accreditation body holds core values of impartiality, integrity, competency and teamwork spirit and looks to partake in developing the Kingdom’s economy by raising the level of technical competency, establishing conformity in terms of certification-granting bodies and insuring better consumer protection.
