RIYADH, 12 May — A survey of Saudi commercial banks is being undertaken in the Kingdom to evaluate their e-commerce capability. This was disclosed at a press conference on the occasion of the visit of Vernon Ellis, international chairman of Accenture, one of the world’s leading consultants and the head of a $10.3 billion global business.
Ellis is a member of the Digital Opportunities Taskforce (DOT-force), established by the leaders of the G-8 industrialized countries to tackle the digital divide. The aim of his visit to the Kingdom was to explain how Accenture could work out a strategy for Saudi private sector in support of the government’s move for creating and seizing on new digital opportunities.
During his stay in the capital he called on Prince Abdullah ibn Faisal Al Turki, secretary-general of the General Investment Authority, for talks on the investment climate in the Kingdom. Accenture has set up a joint venture with the Saudi American Bank, i-Hilal, Saudi Telecom Company and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) for providing e-commerce and e-government solutions to the banking and public sectors.
Ellis said they were working with SAMA and various banks in developing a standard e-payment infrastructure for the Kingdom. Their other project was evolving a system for electronic certification of a transaction within the framework of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure).
Referring to the survey, Maher H. Kaddoura, partner, Accenture, said it will focus on the e-finance area. It will cover the trends in e-finance, the ongoing program in this field, customers’ expectations, and the potential for future growth.
Questionnaires have been distributed among the banks, of whom some 60 percent have already responded.
The aim is to find out to what extent Saudi banks had made progress on the road to e-commerce.
In response to a question on the high service charges of the STC, Philippe Rixhon, partner from the company’s UAE branch, agreed that while the rates were high, it was necessary to understand the rationale behind their pricing structure.
He said STC’s mandate required not only the provision of telecommunication services to the people in the metropolitan cities but also to those in the rural areas. The range of its business included commercial activities as well as those for non-commercial, developmental purposes.
“As such, its rates reflect the realities of the situation. “STC’s position is different from those of others and, therefore, it cannot be equated with telecom companies in the West,” he said.
Describing his talks with Prince Abdullah Al Turki as useful and productive, Ellis said they left him with the impression that the Kingdom is determined to move forward with the economic reforms so as to attract overseas investors. To this end, it was doing whatever necessary to pull out the stops and set up a one-stop shopping center for potential investors.
Ellis said it was important to have an enabling environment for the development of e-commerce. Besides the IT infrastructure, other requirements were the development of human resources and appropriate content in the educational curricula to make the switchover to the digital economy.
