“King Abdullah’ goal is the welfare of all citizens. That is the meaning of the trust put in him by the citizens through their declaration of allegiance. He has been living up to their trust,” Labor Minister Adel Fakieh said on Friday in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the allegiance to the king.
Minister of Higher Education Khaled Al-Anqari said the king stressed the paramount importance of knowledge in the development of a nation by allocating 12 percent of the national budget to higher education tripling the amount over the past five years. Al-Anqari added that the foreign scholarship program launched by the king gave thousands of Saudi youths, including women, ample opportunities to have close contacts with civilizations in foreign lands. “The scholarship program enables more than 120,000 Saudi students to be part of a Saudi generation capable of interacting with the domestic and international changes with confidence apart from enabling them to build a bridge of dialogue with other civilizations.”
Minister of Culture and Information Abdul Aziz Khoja said the achievement of the Culture and Information Ministry under the reign of King Abdullah included the new bill to regulate online newspapers and the improvement of the media industry besides launching new television and radio stations.
Minister of Transport Jabara Al-Seraisry noted the impressive growth in the Kingdom’s transport infrastructure over the past six years with 58,000 km of double-track roads. He considered the starting of work on the 450 km Haramain Railway linking Makkah with Madinah through Jeddah as a landmark achievement.
The country’s nine commercial and industrial ports handle 95 percent of the imports and exports with modern facilities, Al-Seraisry said. The first phase of the 1,384 km of the North-South Railway (NSR) connecting the mining centers in the north with Ras Al-Zour Port is a great accomplishment that would accelerate the national development, he added.
The NSR’s second phase of 1400 km of railroad linking Riyadh with the Saudi-Jordan border passing through Qassim and Hail will be ready by 2013, he said.
Minister of Housing Shuwaish Al-Duwaihi commended the king’s strong move to rein in the housing problem with a new Ministry of Housing and allocation of SR250 billion to construct 500,000 housing units.
Congratulating the king on the occasion, Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority Gov. Amr Al-Dabbagh said King Abdullah’s vision has put the Kingdom at a prime location on the global economic map.
Over the past six years, new reforms improved the investment climate in the Kingdom to such an extent that the Kingdom achieved a place in the top 20 most economically developed countries and eighth in terms of investment flow and 11th in terms of hassle-free business performance in the world.
“The selection of Kingdom by the World Bank among the best five countries that made economic reforms over the past five years reflects the volume of efforts made by King Abdullah to serve the people and the nation and to fulfill his vision of comprehensive economic reforms and thereby push the Kingdom to the forefront of the world’s economically most advanced countries.”
