The Board of Grievances has started work on setting new commercial laws to tackle areas of banking, unscrupulous practices, and legal difficulties experienced in business. Chairman of the Board Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Huqail said that the next few days would see a series of workshops. “We will be looking at new regulations to tackle economic and trade issues in the Kingdom,” Al-Huqail said. “We have started producing them and expect them to solve many trade sector issues.” A recent Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey cited a wide range of concerns in the sector, including the credibility of checks which it said depended on the trustworthiness of the writer of the check and not the document itself. Those surveyed also believed Ministry of Commerce measures to tackle bad checks to be “ineffective.” The survey also noted frequent two-year waits for financial disputes to be resolved in courts, and complaints that “bankrupt” companies are subjected to bankruptcy regulations. The Kingdom further lacks a law governing banking, according to the survey, with the exception of the “banking conventions”, some ministry rulings, and circulars from the Ministry of Finance and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. The study cited failures in the organization of trade agents, brokerage, resource mining and extraction operations, contracting and importing, and insurance and reinsurance, and others. It also noted that the Kingdom's regulations failed to address “unscrupulous” business practices creating unfair competition and arbitration regulations ill-suited to commercial disputes. The survey concluded that commercial law required updating and unifying under one single trade law.
