For the first time, Saudi Arabia is hosting 20 experts from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Asia and the Gulf countries to discuss the development of the maritime sector in Saudi Arabia and the world to look at investment opportunities and challenges of marine transport and ports sector during the 12th edition of International Conference on Transport and Logistics MARLOG, Jeddah 2016. The three-day conference will be held at Hyatt Park Marina from tomorrow (Oct. 25). Focusing on the Middle east region, participants will present their vision to address issues and challenges of international transportation and logistics, at the presence of 400 senior executives of ports, top ports' engineers and maintenance supervisors, procurement's decision makers, leading freight companies, importers, exporters and shipping lines, freight forwarders, logistics companies, ports, operations corporate, rail operators, port equipment and services suppliers in the Gulf countries(GCC). The conference is the largest annual event held in the Middle East in the field of ports, maritime transport and logistics and is organized by Ports Authority in partnership Expo Horizon, and in cooperation with Trans Ports Company of Malaysia. The accompanying Transport and Logistics Expo presents business opportunity for 60 exhibitors and sponsors to communicate directly with delegations participating at the conference. General Director of the Jeddah Islamic Port Captain Abdullah Al-Zami pointed out that the conference hosts seven sessions. The first session highlights adapting to global financial and economic fluctuations and their impact on marine activities, and the future of transport in the Middle East. Speakers of this first session are the English experts Ray Tefan and Royal Haskoning and Paul Van director of maritime transport in Netherlands. The second session hosts Hong Kong experts in the Gulf ports Chris Powell and Riley Parsons, legal Counsel James Bremen and expert Herbert Smith in Qatar ports. In the presence of international technical expert Ahmed Shawkat from the United States, Jens Oliver Vice President of the German Development Bank, and Deepak C. Khanna, chief executive of International Finance Corporate (IFC) in UAE, Al-Zami pointed out that the third session focuses on financing infrastructure construction in ports and international experiences. The Fourth Session reviews innovations in multimedia communication and the challenges facing the transport sector in the Middle East and their influence on commercial shipping, speakers are experts Shailesh Chandran and Paul Stevens from UAE ports and senior adviser in the English customs John Walden. According to Al-Zami the fifth session will discuss transport, logistics and opportunities for the global maritime transport development, reviewing a range of experiences, including the experience port of Aqaba in Jordan by Tariq Al-Dajani, board member of Jordanian Shipping Lines, Michal Delern vice president of the shipping lines in Doha port, and Kim Winter CEO Logistics Group UAE. The sixth session is on improving the container terminals in ports and introducing latest technologies, speaker is French expert Simonetti Alfio, and Rob Van from UAE and German expert Dr. Wolfgang Melzer. The seventh session is on the best strategic and operational practices in ports and container terminals with working papers on global economic transformations their impact on ports, speakers are Italian expert Francesco Gallo, Joseph Crowley from Georgia and Takao Aomori from Singapore. — SG
