JEDDAH, 5 December 2005 — The past four years have been the most important in the history of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, according to Dr. Ghassan Al-Sulaiman, its outgoing chairman.
“The current board of directors has achieved 90 percent of the goals it set for itself at the beginning of its term four years ago,” he said.
The achievements are a reflection of the importance of the businessmen and the established business families in Jeddah who were the pioneers in the nation’s economic journey and the founders of JCCI, which dates from 60 years ago and was the first chamber of commerce in the Kingdom.
“The current board established specialized centers for serving the chambers’ members,” said Dr. Al-Sulaiman. These centers are Jeddah Center for Developing Small Establishments, the Business Sector Services Center and the Jeddah Center for Human Resources. Another two centers were also set up — the Khadija bint Khowailid Center for serving businesswomen and the Jeddah Marketing Board.
“These centers are basic focus points of the current board’s goals and they provide direct services to the chambers’ members,” said Dr. Al-Sulaiman. More than 800,000 people have benefited from the services of these centers.
Among the important things done by the current board has been the restructuring of the administration by transferring two-thirds of the staff to direct services of the members by forming ten administrations that support ten economic activities. “The board adopted the principle of transparency in dealing with the members by direct introductions to its services and financial standings periodically through announcements or press statements,” said Dr. Al-Sulaiman. The board spent SR2 million to re-qualify the staff about the new services, benefiting from the experience of top international modern administration institutes and it is completing a study on its final vision. Financially, the board received SR45 million, at no cost to members, to support its activities and forums and was able to reduce its expenses and save SR13.4 million of members’ money.
The chamber has also been able, for the first time, to attract the largest number of businessmen to participate in its activities by supervising and directing its affairs through the support councils. And it was the first chamber to implement electronic authentication of documents, moving from typical methods of service to the forefront of technology.
A new board of directors was elected last week and for the first time, it includes two women. It will build on these achievements as it faces new challenges. Secretary-general of the JCCI, Mohammed Al-Sharif, expects the chamber to increase its services for small establishments and businesswomen. “I think these two sectors will dominate the budget and the efforts of the chamber,” he said. This was clearly supported by the focus of the candidates during the recent board elections on these two sectors.
Jeddah’s election experience also indicates the business sector’s desire to take a more active role in developing the nation’s economy and human resources, according to Al-Sharif.
“The general trend by our country’s leaders is to benefit from the successful experiences of leading businessmen and national companies, especially in the face of the new challenges and changes arising from the Kingdom’s entry into the World Trade Organization,” he said.
The sector that Jeddah businesses have and will continue to develop and operate in order to make it a strong source of income is tourism, according to Al-Sharif.
“One of the most important plans of the board is making Jeddah the top tourist city destination,” said Al-Sharif. This will be done by focusing on religious tourism due to Jeddah’s proximity to Makkah and it being the gateway to the holy cities as well as on making Jeddah a center for economic forums and conferences. A third tourism area to be developed is health care. “There will be more support for the health sector to develop health treatment tourism as one of Jeddah’s main income sources, considering the hundreds of millions of riyals which Saudis spend on health centers abroad,” he said.
