Common GCC motor insurance policy this year

The alarming rise in fatal traffic accidents is the focus of the Gulf Traffic Week that was launched yesterday by Riyadh Gov. Prince Khaled bin Bandar. The event, entitled “Our goal is your safety”, is being held across the six-member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), where on average one person is killed on the road every hour.
Prince Khaled stressed the importance of promoting road safety amid a mounting number of traffic accidents in the Gulf states. The opening ceremony was attended by Prince Turki bin Abdullah, vice governor of Riyadh region, senior officials of the traffic department and top executives of Saudi Aramco.
A unified insurance plan for automobiles in the Gulf region was also announced on this occasion.
Later, Prince Khaled launched a premier road extension project in the city (an extension of the Abu Bakr and Al-Oroubah roads). He also laid the foundation stone for a tunnel project on Salahuddin Road at its intersection with Makkah Road in the capital after inaugurating the GCC Traffic Week.
“The GCC event seeks to promote awareness about traffic safety with the aim of reducing mortality figures from accidents,” said a GCC official, while revealing that the unified GCC insurance plan will be implemented later this year.
“A draft of the proposed unified insurance policy for the GCC has been approved,” said the official, adding that the policy will be implemented before the end of the year. “Under the new policy, subscribers to motor insurance policies in all GCC countries will be covered for motoring throughout the Gulf region,” he explained. Currently, motor insurance premiums differ from one Gulf country to another, mainly due to differences in risk assessment and compensation schemes.
Motorists driving from one GCC state to another currently need to buy third-party insurance cover. This is more common in the case of Saudi Arabia which attracts a large number of religious visitors from the region who prefer to travel by road. The move to introduce this unified policy is significant keeping in view the millions of vehicles on the roads of Gulf countries.
According to a report by Business Monitor International, the number of new cars sold in Saudi Arabia per year is expected to exceed one million units by 2016. In GCC countries, the number of traffic accidents is very high. The number of casualties in road accidents in the GCC is higher than in the United States despite the significantly higher number of cars and vehicles plying on the roads of the US.