Laura Bashraheel Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – The fifth session of Jeddah Commercial Forum discussed the concepts of dumping, subsidizing and piracy in Saudi Arabia and the GCC market. The session titled “Fair Competition under Increasing Adverse Practices to Saudi and Gulf Economy and Trade” started with the moderator, Fahd Al-Aitani, assistant professor of Business Administration department at the Faculty of Economics and Management at King Abdul Aziz University. The first topic by Nasir Al-Asmi, GCC assistant secretary General and Chairman of the Anti-Dumping and Subsidizing General Secretariat, discussed dumping, subsidizing, unjustified import-increase and trade piracy, and their causes in the Kingdom and Gulf States. Al-Asmi presented an overview of the economic impact of harmful practices in international trade on the GCC and the establishment of the Customs Union and the GCC joint market and the GCC joining the WTO. He also talked about the increasing harmful practices in international trade, the growth of specialized units to combat harmful practices in international trade as well as explaining the concept of harmful practices and types of dumping, subsidies, and the increase in imports. He explained the effects of harmful practices to the economy in general, and on the Gulf economy in particular. “The number of complaints made by the Gulf Industry to the Anti-Dumping and Subsidizing General Secretariat of harmful practices in international trade are 13. Also, the Gulf undustry is facing difficulties in foreign markets as a result of other member states of the WTO, including, for example, India, the European Union and the United States, Canada, Pakistan and China which impose protective measures on exports of the GCC under claims of its harmful practices to the local industries in those countries,” he said. He concluded his speech with number of recommendations, including the definition of the parties involved in investigations of harmful practices, the mechanisms to open investigations and their rights and duties toward the investigations. Also, educating the Gulf industry of their rights to file a complaint against harmful practices within the GCC market. He urged Gulf industries that are subject to investigations of harmful practices to cooperate with the foreign investigating authorities so that they can defend themselves and reach settlement. Amr Rajab, member of the Shoura Council and a legal advisor, discussed the official ways to address the issue of dumping, subsidizing, unjustified import increases and trade piracy in the Kingdom and Gulf States. He explained the term “copyright” as defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as a set of legal and exclusive rights for authors to be able to act with their material as pleased and prevent others from using it unless after consent from both parties. He said that intellectual property includes data and databases, computer software, games software, movies, music, books, audio, broadcasting, decrypted electronic devices and explaining clearly a number of national systems in combating piracy. Rajab also discussed the negative effects of piracy. “The estimated spending on IT industry in Saudi Arabia for the year 2011 is $ 6.6 billion, 6 billion for devices, $1.7 billion on services and less than $600 million on programs. The number of computer devices used in the Kingdom is more than eight million,” he said. Rajab said in order to strengthen the protection of copyright, awareness campaigns are required from the government to protect intellectual property rights, enhance security efforts in raids, using the media to publish reports immediately on such cases as well as defamation and imprisonment.
