Business leaders have welcomed Saudi efforts to implement fundamental changes to the regulations of joint business councils with the aim of boosting their role in the future.
The aspired changes seek to enable the councils to overcome the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic and strengthen their capacity to hold successful commercial partnerships and achieve the goals of Vision 2030.
In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Dr. Kamel Al-Munajjed, Chairman of the Saudi Indian Business Council, said: “The General Authority for Foreign Trade is working to develop the regulations of Saudi foreign business councils in order to keep abreast of developments after the coronavirus pandemic and to accelerate successful commercial partnerships to increase the private sector’s contribution to foreign trade.”
According to Al-Munajjed, one of the most important problems that the joint business councils faced over the past years was the lack of a unified strategy and the absence of unified standards for measuring performance.
He stressed that the development of regulations to overcome the aforementioned obstacles would give a great impetus to the work of the joint councils in contributing to the development of foreign trade and achieving many goals in Vision 2030.
For his part, Mohammed Al-Hammadi - a member of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and former head of a joint Saudi business council - underlined the importance of the planned move by the Ministry of Commerce and the General Authority for Foreign Trade regarding developing a work regulation for Saudi foreign business councils to keep pace with the post-pandemic period.
In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Hammadi expected that the new regulations would greatly contribute to the development of Saudi foreign relations on the economic, commercial and investment levels.