RIYADH, 6 February 2003 — The Ministry of Commerce has won the Middle East Prize for Information Technology in acknowledgement of the Kingdom’s efforts to raise awareness of IT and e-commerce concepts and applications to upgrade the performance of government agencies and the private sector, the Saudi Press Agency reported yesterday. The award was announced during the second GCC Economic Forum in Dubai recently. Minister of Commerce Osama Faqeeh said the Kingdom was the biggest user of IT in the Middle East, and the Saudi market was one of the six fastest growing IT markets in the world.