SCTH President: Two years ago we started working on a plan to sepearate some of SCTH sectors after maturity
aTP- Arab tourism portal- Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, President of SCTH, Chairman of the Supervising Committee of the National Handicraft Program “Bari”, stated that, SCTH since its inception, fifteen years ago, was seeking to build an integrated tourism sector by establishing its subsidiary activities, offering them with necessary potentials, requirements and institutional structures.
In this context, SCTH has designed all its sectors and activities in a way that enables them to work separately and independently or join other sectors and authorities according to the approach that was approved by the board of directors of SCTH in 2004 under the theme “Lead then recede”.
“Lead then recede,” means that SCTH, to establish and lead activities in the beginning, and when it recognizes that the partners are ready and qualified to run independently, it will release them as new administrative entities or the private sector. Since the very beginning, SCTH believed that the tourism and heritage project is an “integrative project” that relies on partnership and never as a “power acquisition project” aimed at seizing of powers.
“We will announce soon a set of sectors and activities that will be further released and handed over to other authorities to run them after ensuring their maturity and readiness,” HRH announced.
SCTH President disclosed that, the body has begun putting into effect the “receding” part of its plan for releasing some of its sectors three years ago, ever since it launched “the comprehensive development program”, and hoped this phase will be concluded before the end of 2017.
President of SCTH made his comment in a press statement following his attendance of the seventh meeting of the Supervising Committee of “Bari” at the Headquarters in Riyadh on Sunday 8th May 2016.
“SCTH when established, it was an real example of a “partnership project”, then chaired by late Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, with the participation of a group of ministers including late Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz, Prince Met’ab bin Abdul Aziz, late Prince Saudi Al Faisal, and number of ministers and representatives of private sector. SCTH will not assume to be a creditable supervisor of such a large economic industry, that didn’t actually exist.”
“SCTH in fact has begun organization of national tourism industry not just a national tourism sector, then the cultural heritage sector was joined with it, which has strong correlations with the tourism sector throughout the world.
"In light of the existence of the two large sectors as major components of tourism, so we look for the tourism industry as an integrated industry that includes security, accommodation, transport, tourism services as well as a large number of tourist destinations, facilities, and events. SCTH began organization of these new sectors before releasing them and allowing them to run themselves at the provincial and partners levels after being confirmed of their maturity,” HRH Said.
“Examples are many. Investment in tourism destinations over coastline of the Red Sea which SCTH has requested the State to be shifted to the Public Investment Fund (PIF) to undertake their execution and accordingly, the Tourism Investment and Development Company was established and which await the formation of its Board of Directors to be the spearhead in the development of tourist destinations.”
The President of SCTH added: “There are many other major and important sectors in this respect such as National Handicraft Program “Bari” which was founded by the Cabinet decision dated 23/04/2012, as the national strategy for the development of trades and crafts and its five-year operational plan. Today we have taken a decision for not extending SCTH supervision on this sector for more than the allowed period, which is 5 years, as the program has passed all its set phases including the project management phase, which is carried out by SCTH. We expect Bari to become an independent program by the end of next year and to work under different administration.”
“There are 20 similar examples under process by SCTH that were established, regulated and launched. like the archaeological research center, national museums, media innovation centre, joint marketing programs, Heritage hotels and hospitality company, and now the new established entities, such as the Entertainment Commission, that will actually carry this burden and will trip on the entertainment path,” concluded.
