Riyadh, e-Media:
Dr. Abdul Rahman bin Ahmad Al-Ja'fary, Governor of Communications and Information Technology, asserted that development of Technology is a strong pillar upon which development of society is to be based especially that it leads to varying income resources.
Inaugurating CITC's IT Forum 2010 titled "Challenges and Opportunities of Developing IT in Saudi Arabia" and held at Riyadh Four Seasons, he delivered a speech stating that Such a development can improve balance of payments for International Trade helping the Kingdom to keep up with developed countries.
Dr. Al-Gaafary highlighted the role of CITC in developing IT sector in the Kingdom pointing out the launch of a set of initiatives that have been envisioned to develop the sector with a more IT investment that can bring about profitability and improvement of all other investment sectors. He said that IT expenditure in Saudi Arabia for the year 2009 exceeded SR 22 Billion which made the Kingdom one of the biggest IT markets in the Middle East. Such an expenditure is expected to increase to about SR 37 Billion in 2013, he pointed out indicating that PC usage percentage in the Kingdom reached about 10 Million users by the 2009 exceeding 38.4% of all population.
The first session of the Forum, headed by Dr. Khalid Gonaim executive president of Al-Elm Company, was dedicated to discuss future opportunities of IT industry in the Kingdom. The session focused on specifying the developing regions in reference to availability and spread of IT services. The second session, headed by Dr. Khalid Al-Sabty Education Deputy Minister, discussed the dire need for developing national IT specialized skills and localizing them. It threw light, in addition, on gaps of current skills so as to assess and then compose proper strategies for overcoming such challenges within the future perspective. Finally, the third session concluded with main points about what was generally discussed at the forum.