Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09JEDDAH291
2009-08-05 13:20:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Consulate Jeddah
Cable title:  

FIRST JEDDAH COMMERCIAL FORUM: SAUDI WOMEN FOCUS

Tags:  ECON KWMN PHUM SA SOCI 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO5349
RR RUEHDE RUEHDH RUEHDIR
DE RUEHJI #0291/01 2171320
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 051320Z AUG 09
FM AMCONSUL JEDDAH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1458
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 JEDDAH 000291 

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/ARP (HARRIS),DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/05/2014
TAGS: ECON KWMN PHUM SA SOCI
SUBJECT: FIRST JEDDAH COMMERCIAL FORUM: SAUDI WOMEN FOCUS
ON DOMESTIC REGULATORY CHALLENGES

REF: A. JEDDAH 50

B. JEDDAH 277

Classified By: Consul General Martin R. Quinn for reasons 1.4 (b) and (
d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 JEDDAH 000291

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/ARP (HARRIS),DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/05/2014
TAGS: ECON KWMN PHUM SA SOCI
SUBJECT: FIRST JEDDAH COMMERCIAL FORUM: SAUDI WOMEN FOCUS
ON DOMESTIC REGULATORY CHALLENGES

REF: A. JEDDAH 50

B. JEDDAH 277

Classified By: Consul General Martin R. Quinn for reasons 1.4 (b) and (
d)


1. (C) Summary. The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(JCCI),held the first Jeddah Commercial Forum (JCF) from
June 16-18, under the theme &Toward a Successful Global
Economic and Commercial Environment.8 An audience of over
1,000, including present and former Ministers, top government
officials, businessmen and -women, attended the opening
ceremony in the first major business forum in Saudi Arabia
presided over by a Saudi woman, JCCI board member Nashwa
Taher. In her opening remarks Taher said the objective of the
JCF was to introduce the most pressing challenges facing the
Saudi business community today and to identify and debate
actions needed to update the current system of commercial
regulations. While this objective was achieved, only time
will tell whether the public airing of grievances will result
in official action. End summary.


2. (SBU) The Governor of Makkah, Prince Khaled Al-Faisal,
Commerce Minister Abdullah Zainel Alireza, and JCCI Chairman
Mohammed Al-Fadl, all spoke at the JCF opening, each praising
Taher -- a gesture which in itself was noteworthy. The
Governor went even further, paying tribute to the important
contribution of the women of the JCCI to the work of the
Chamber and the organization of the Forum.


3. (SBU) The forum,s program was pedestrian and the caliber
of most of the speakers second-tier. Many panelists merely
recited their organizations, mission statements posted on
their websites. There were no real players or
decision-makers, a marked difference from the annual Jeddah
Economic Forum. (Comment: Some in the business community
viewed the JCF as a smaller version of Jeddah Economic Forum
(JEF) - which was cancelled this year in a political power
play (reftels). Others speculated that it was intended to
replace the JEF. Nashwa Taher, however, consistently
characterized the JCF, with its completely domestic agenda,
as distinct from the outwardly focused, glitzy JEF and in the
end there was no confusing the two fora.)



4. (SBU) In the first session, dedicated to project finance
in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, Dr. Nahed Taher
(no relation to Nashwa Taher),CEO of Gulf One Bank and the
first Saudi woman to head a bank in Saudi Arabia, gave the
strongest presentation of the three-day event. Speaking
about the causes of the economic downturn, she criticized the
fading role of local banks in financing small projects,
claiming that their decline had contributed to the increase
in poverty in the country. She encouraged more investment in
the energy and infrastructure sectors in the Kingdom and the
region, and discouraged investment in the US and Europe.
Taher also argued vigorously for a return to the gold
standard.

Bad checks a major problem
--------------


5. (C) The second panel discussed securities regulation
which, translated into local parlance, meant the growing
phenomenon of bad checks being issued by businesses as
payment to other businesses. From the pointed failure of the
panelists to agree on the scope of the problem to the heated
Q&A, it was clear that bad checks have become a major scourge
of the business environment in Saudi Arabia. A representative
from the Ministry of Commerce estimated the number of
unsettled cases of bounced checks at between 7,000 and 11,000
per year over the past two years. However, businessman
panelist Ali Hussein Ali Reda stated that there are more than
55,000 cases in Riyadh and Jeddah alone, pointedly refuting
the official line. His statement created a stir during the
Q&A when members of the business community complained about
the difficulty in resolving disputes and obtaining redress
and repeatedly called for an immediate change in regulations
to effect harsher penalties for violators. Panelist Khloud
Al-Dakheel, the Deputy CEO of Al-Dakheel Financial Group,
called for unifying the procedures regulating financial paper
noting that there are currently three organizations with
overlapping regulatory authority, the Ministries of Commerce
and Finance and the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA).

Ministry of Commerce attacked as roadblock
--------------


JEDDAH 00000291 002 OF 002



6. (C) The other controversial debate at the Forum occurred
during the third panel, entitled "Government Procedures and
their Repercussions on the Saudi Investment Climate."
Following the opening speech by prominent local lawyer, Majid
Gharoub, a representative from the Ministry of Commerce,
Hassan Aqeel, praised the supportive bureaucratic procedures
for business, noting that all business licenses are issued
within 24 hours. This claim was met with vocal consternation
by numerous audience members who told personal stories during
the Q&A of long delays in obtaining business licenses. This
recitation ultimately led to the admission by Aqeel that
while most licenses are issued within 24 hours in Riyadh, the
fact that applications from other cities must be sent to
Riyadh for approval might cause delays of up to one month.
Still, given the claims of three, six, eight and even
twelve-month delays, his credibility was shot.

Businesswomen voice their complaints
--------------


7. (C) A question from the women,s side of the room created
a general stir when Mohjat Bin Yaqoub and then a number of
other women following her, raised the hot-button issue of the
legal requirement to employ a male general manager in any
woman-owned business that deals with the public. Several
prominent women in the audience repeatedly questioned and
debated the panel which tried to deflect the discussion as
unrelated to their topic. Hassan Aqeel defended the Ministry
saying it had paved the way for women and allowed them to
personally manage their businesses, as long as they are run
&inside a women-only environment.8 He added that it is not
up to the Ministry of Commerce to address this issue. But he
was cornered by the women who noted, correctly, that the
Labor Law now permits gender mixing in the workplace, thus
eliminating the need for a male employee to address the male
public. They demanded that the Ministry of Commerce
harmonize its regulations with those of the Ministry of
Labor. The men,s side of the room stoically sat by while the
women enthusiastically applauded each other.


8. (C) The women also stood their ground the next day during
the Q&A following a panel on the legal and judicial system.
When Khloud Al-Dakheel asked about the requirement for women
to submit photographs to obtain company registrations, a
requirement at odds with the cultural prohibition against
women showing their faces to unrelated males, the question
was dismissed out of hand by panel chair Gharoub as unrelated
to the panel topic. This put-down caused an uproar on the
women's side of the room while again the men sat in silence.
(At one point the simultaneous translator sighed in
exasperation, &These women are impossible,8 although few
other than EconOff were using the closed-circuit service.)

Women may be the JCF's real winners
--------------


9. (C) Comment. The forum,s recommendations -- including the
full-scale re-evaluation of the existing 75 commercial laws
to accommodate recent global and local changes )- may never
be taken up -- as is often the case following similar
programs in the Kingdom. What is clear, however, is that the
very public success of the JCF,s female president, Nashwa
Taher, added one more page to the story of the advancing role
of women in the Jeddah business community. Immediately after
the forum the JCCI announced that another of its four female
board members, Olfat Kabbani, will chair a forum next October
dedicated to women and corporate social responsibility. And
one of the women who complained that her license for a
women-only business was being held up for six months recently
reported that she received a call from Ministry of Commerce
official Hassan Aqeel the following week with the result that
she is now fully licensed to set up a real estate franchise
program to develop "women-only" realty agencies in the
Kingdom. End comment.
QUINN