RIYADH — Saudi courts held more than 1 million hearings and extended about 12 million judicial services to the litigants over the past six months, the Ministry of Justice announced in a statistical report. This is in addition to documentation services, which have all become paperless. The ministry said the services were provided by the general, criminal, summary, commercial, labor, executive and personal affairs courts. According to the ministry, courts in the Riyadh region held as many as 291,000 hearings followed by Makkah, where 282,000 court sessions. The Eastern Province came third with 150,000 court sessions. The report said courts all over the Kingdom issued more than 411,000 rulings while the courts of appeal upheld about 100,000 of them. The ministry said 99.9 percent of the operations in executive courts were carried out electronically without the need for paperwork, which has become a thing of the past. It said executive courts received more than 450,000 requests to recover more than SR127 billion. The ministry said more than 1.8 million documentation services, consisting of 1 million powers of attorney and 570,000 authentications of the real estate properties, were extended during the period. About 6 million beneficiaries visited the ministry›s electronic gate in the first months of the Hijri year to use 90 services provided through the gate. Saudi Arabia has advanced 24 positions to become 59th in the world in terms of contract enforcement thanks to reforms implemented by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) over the past two years. Among the reforms is the ministry›s publication of commercial rulings, with over 6,260 rulings made available so far on its online portal. A series of recent procedures have also contributed to the swiftness and quality of commercial rulings. This includes implementing regulations of Civil Procedure Law, setting the adjudication date of a commercial case within 20 days from its date of registration, and limiting the number of possible adjournments to only three. A commercial case can now be filed electronically through the ministry›s portal, the ministry pointed out.
