The National Committee of Land Transportation and the Saudi Council of Chambers of Commerce and Industry have called for curtailing the proliferation of unauthorized car rental agencies in the Kingdom. The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the problems in land transportation, stressing that the police need to deal firmly with unauthorized car rental offices. “The current system followed by car rental agencies is not in harmony with the regulations of the World Trade Organization and the needs of the tourist industry. There is an urgent need for a change in the system,” said Saeed Ali Al-Bassami, vice-president of the car rentals board The JCCI meeting, according to Al-Bassami, dealt with possible solutions to the problems and constraints facing the car rental industry in the Kingdom, with the main issue being the need to take a stand against the large numbers of unauthorized car rental offices. One of the major problems faced by car rental agencies is the fact that clients often do not return the cars on time and it is difficult to collect payment from them due to the length of time. It takes the courts to act on requests for back payment. “The police need to play a more active role in dealing with people who do not return rental cars. They need to arrest them as soon as they receive a report,” Al-Bassami said. “The committee asked for documentation of rental contracts so it can help in collecting late rental payments,” said Al-Bassami, adding that “lawyers are usually uninterested in such small cases which leaves car rental agencies with no way to secure their legal rights.” The JCCI has compiled a car rental blacklist with over 600,000 names of those who have failed to make payments which represents a yearly loss of SR500 million for car rental agencies. According to JCCI statistics, the Saudi car rental market is worth SR2.5 billion a year with around 1250 rental agencies and 166,000 cars. “With annual profits of SR2.5 billion, the Saudi car rental business is one of the biggest in the Middle East,” said Al
