In October the Ministry of Planning will sponsor a forum dealing with the Saudi economy in the coming two decades.
The local media have carried reports of the topics to be discussed. Representatives of the World Bank and other international organizations will naturally be invited to participate. This move by the ministry marks a shift in its customary practice of drawing up plans and strategies well away from public knowledge and open discussion.
The importance of such gatherings, with the participation of a wide range of experts, lies in the fact that they pave the way for formulating new strategies with broader and deeper insight into underlying economic causes. The gatherings also help planners get rid of outmoded practices and develop new ways of meeting the demands of the changing world in a responsible manner.
With full respect to the projected forum, however, I would point out that the "government reports" — elegantly presented by undersecretaries and director generals — which constitute the basic raw material of the proposed forum could not possibly be described as research papers. Genuine research papers carry the authority of scientific studies and methods. How can government officials contribute to making plans and ideas for the next 20 years when they cannot even draw up viable plans for one year in their own departments?
Another operational aspect of the seminar I noticed was the shortness of time allotted to each speaker. Each session lasts about 3.5 hours and seven or eight papers are presented during the session. Each expert in theory will get slightly less than 30 minutes to make his points. After deducting time for the chairman’s remarks, introductions and applause, the time for a speaker will, however, be much nearer 20 minutes.
I also see that the papers have been assigned to "names" and "designations" rather than to topics and ideas. This must be the reason for the absence of such important topics as economic policies, growth rate, credit policies, falling per capita income, public debt, population growth, etc. Instead, topics such as ecology and wildlife, girls’ education policies, study of the postal department, higher education policies, etc. get the attention. There are three papers dealing with the impact of the Kingdom’s accession to the World Trade Organization while what we need is a paper on the obstacles to joining the organization and ways to remove them.
The seminar fails to provide sufficient opportunity for the private sector to present its view on the partnership between public and private sectors.
The private sector gets the opportunity to present only one paper while the other sector gets six. What kind of partnership is this?
In spite of all this, it is very significant to note that we are breaking away from our traditional style of holding seminars and conferences which merely justify and excuse the existing situation and predict a bright tomorrow.
