RIYADH, 28 November — Some 400 IT companies around the world will participate in the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex) to be held for the first time in Riyadh from April 21 to 25 next year.

Prince Saud Abdullah Al-Faisal, chairman of Riyadh Exhibitions Co., said at a press conference here Monday night that major IT companies from the United States and Japan will display their state-of-the-art technologies at the show, which will run concurrently with a seminar on e-government.

He said Gitex was coming to Riyadh after a successful recent run in Dubai. The decision to stage the exhibition in the capital, he pointed out, was due to the fact that, with a population of some four million, it is home to the largest concentration of governmental and corporate decision-makers.

Asked if the Sept. 11 events will have any impact on the expo, Wahid Atalla, general manager of Dubai World Trade Center, said this was not the case since some high profile organizations were taking part in the show.

Speaking to Arab News later, Abdulrahman Al-Jeraisy, president of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Husain Al-Athel, secretary-general of RCCI, referred to the chamber’s role in training young Saudis for a career in Information Technology.

They said the chamber also had a placement service under which their trainees had landed IT-related jobs with the private sector firms.

The diplomas granted by the chamber were recognized in the employment market even by large companies, Al-Athel said.

According to Dr. Akram Masri, a senior executive of Riyadh Exhibitions Co., IT spending in the Middle East will exceed $4.6 billion next year. He said Saudi Arabia accounts for 40 percent of the IT market in the Gulf.

Asked about the growth of e-commerce in the Kingdom, he said it was booming, with over 600,000 new Internet subscribers driving the massive growth. The opening of direct access to the Internet "is stimulating vast growth in this sector for providers of products, software and consultancy services".

He added that the schools’ Net project of Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, would lend a further momentum to the use of Internet in the Kingdom.

A study carried out by the "Arab World Internet" magazine estimates that the number of Internet users in the region will increase by 80 percent during the next two years.

Currently, the number of such users stands at 12 million, 0.7 percent of the 280 million Arab world population.