RIYADH, 6 December 2005 — The participants on the second day of the Riyadh Economic Forum discussed transparency and accountability in the Kingdom. They stressed that the country should take urgent steps to combat corruption in the public and private sectors in addition to releasing vital information which is currently unavailable to the public.
A paper entitled “Development of Transparency and Economic Accountability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” prepared by Abdul Aziz Al-Owaishig was presented. In the paper, Abdul Aziz pointed out that current Saudi law did not mandate that government regulations be publicly announced and that in reality, only a few of them were ever announced in the media.
He also said that the National Center for Documents and Transcripts, established in 1989, had still not fulfilled its function of publishing the Kingdom’s laws. Concerning judicial matters, he said that the Court of Grievances had stopped announcing its regulations in 1983.
Even though the Council of Ministers issued a ruling in 2002 that the Ministry of Justice should announce the results of all its religious judicial hearings, this has not been done. The paper also said that judicial and non-judicial committees rarely announced their findings and regulations.
The paper said that many government bodies relied on unwritten regulations and directives and that there was no way that members of the public could possibly know what the regulations were or how to follow them.
One point was that all necessary information be submitted concerning public spending.
Participants said the Kingdom ranked 70th in the world out of 154 countries in terms of information blockage. It also ranked 2nd in the world in ambiguity and not revealing information.
Abdul Aziz said that implementing transparency in the Kingdom required the implementation of international standards. He also said government institutions needed to provide data to citizens and to the private sector in order to establish future strategies as well as to calculate investment risk factors. This information should be easily accessible by all citizens, he added.
Abdul Aziz emphasized the importance of establishments releasing basic economic data. He said that certain standards should apply to the release of this information and research and studies should be conducted to provide citizens with a clear idea of the institution’s contribution to the economy.
He also mentioned transparency in companies that offer their shares for public sharing. The system should guarantee the release of all information relating to its financial, accounting and administrative aspects. Any company that refuses should be fined or banned.
“The unavailability of information that could affect the interests of clients or shareholders of a public company is a clear violation of the law, even if it does not cause the company any harm,” he said.
