Saudi Arabia will enforce two major regulatory frameworks, the Law of Commercial Register and Law of Trade Names, starting Thursday, marking a significant overhaul of its business registration process.
The reforms are part of the kingdom’s ongoing efforts to modernize its regulatory environment, create a more business-friendly ecosystem, and strengthen its position as a global investment hub in line with Vision 2030.
Approved by the Saudi government on Sept. 17, the new laws represent a major regulatory shift aimed at empowering investors, facilitating business growth, and unlocking investment opportunities nationwide.
They form part of a broader, ongoing regulatory transformation designed to enhance transparency, improve the business climate, and align with the kingdom’s economic and technological advancements.
Commerce Minister Majid Al-Kassabi said the Cabinet’s approval of the laws aims to streamline business operations and ease the burden on enterprises by consolidating their registration into a single nationwide record.
The new framework also standardizes the reservation and registration of trade names to protect and enhance their value, aligning with Saudi Arabia’s economic and technological advancements under Vision 2030.
Saudi Arabia ranks 62nd out of 190 economies in the World Bank's latest annual Ease of Doing Business index.
Ministry of Commerce official spokesperson Abdulrahman Al-Hussein noted that the new commercial register law introduces major changes.
Among the key changes are the elimination of subsidiary registers, with a single commercial register now being sufficient. Additionally, the law removes the requirement to specify the city of registration, allowing one commercial registration to apply across all regions of the Kingdom.
The new law also obligated commercial establishments in Saudi Arabia to open bank accounts linked to the establishment in order to enhance its reliability and ensure the integrity of its transactions.
In addition, the law cancels the expiration date for the commercial register, requiring only an annual confirmation of the data, the spokesman stated.
Under the law, the commercial registration number will serve as the establishment’s unified number, starting with (7).
The ministry will grant existing subsidiary registers a five-year grace period to rectify their status in accordance with the new regulations.
Meanwhile, the new Law of Trade Names in Saudi Arabia, which consists of 23 articles, aims to regulate the procedures for reserving and recording names in the commercial register, maximizing their value, and protecting them and their rights.
The law allows a trade name to be reserved before it is recorded for a specific period that can be extended. It also sets the requirements that must be met by trade names to be registered or reserved, and the criteria for prohibited names.
Al-Hussein explained that the new regulations also allow for the reservation and registration of trade names in English, including letters or numbers.
This marks a departure from the previous law, which permitted only Arabic names without foreign characters or numbers.
The new law will enable the management of trade names independently from the establishment, allowing for the transfer of their ownership while prohibiting the registration of identical or similar names for different establishments in Saudi Arabia, even if their activities differ.
Al-Hussein noted that the law also includes regulations for reserving family names as trade names and establishes criteria for prohibited or misleading names.
