The Ministry of Transport is participating in the Budget Forum 2020, organized by the Ministry of Finance represented by the Spending Efficiency Realization Center on Wednesday, under the patronage of His Excellency the Minister of Finance, Mr. Mohammed Al-Jadaan at the Intercontinental Hotel in Riyadh.
Deputy Minister of Transport for Operation and Road Maintenance, Engineer Tarek Al Shami, has presented the Ministry of Transport’s experience at the forum through a dialogue session on the practices and joint cooperation with the Spending Efficiency Realization Center.
On this occasion, Eng. Tarek Al-Shami emphasized the most important empowering means of achieving the spending efficiency from the authorities’ perspective. He highlighted the success milestones in the cooperation journey between the Ministry of Transport and the Spending Efficiency Realization Center and the role of automation in achieving the spending efficiency.
He said that the Ministry of Transport has been able to find abundances to be utilized to improve the roads’ efficacy by contributing with the Spending Efficiency Realization Center through the concerted efforts and agreement on the principle of work based on the Kingdom’s vision 2030, which was developed by our wise government, represented by one of the vision programs which is the financial balance.
Al-Shami added that the Ministry of Transport is working hard to provide safe and secure methods of high quality, pointing out that high quality does not mean that the cost will be high.
He also stressed that the ministry enjoys the support and guidance of His Excellency the Minister of Transport, Dr. Nabil bin Mohammed Al-Amoudi, where he always emphasizes the support of the work and cooperation in full transparency as a team with the Center, in defining a framework to work within the recommendations of the Center and MOT. These recommendations set the goals to reach a single benefit, which is serving the Kingdom. He added that the goal is not to reduce the budget, but to achieve the project’s optimal model.
He pointed out that working with the Center on a daily and field basis, has enabled the Ministry of Transport to see the obstacles closely, find solutions and achieve them. It also assisted in the implementation of a plan submitted by the Ministry to the Spending Efficiency Realization Center, which contains a comprehensive study of engineering solutions that led us to figure out the reasons for the difference in the maintenance prices and made us avoid costs exceeding 2.2 billion riyals. These costs were utilized to boost maintenance contracts in order to improve road quality.
His Excellency said that the Ministry of Transport has provided “Naqil” program which facilitates dealing with government services and the ministry branches and facilitates procedures. The Ministry also provided the excavation program through which permits can be given to water and electricity companies. Another program will also be launched soon that will enable the Ministry to automate the maintenance so that all transactions between MOT and the contractors will be through it. This program facilitates the procedures and enables the ministry to perform an analysis of the contractors’ performance. He also stressed that all these programs will help to reduce the operational costs and transfer them to places where it is possible to benefit from.
The Ministry of Finance, in cooperation with the Spending Efficiency Realization Center, has set a number of bodies, including MOT, to review its experience in order to achieve the Center’s objectives through raising the efficiency of a number of projects and that aims at increasing the quality and safety on the roads.
It is worth to mention that the Forum has held a number of dialogue sessions, including a session to discuss all aspects of phases and procedures to achieve the spending efficiency; through which Engineer Tarek Al-Shami has stressed on the cooperation of MOT with the Spending Efficiency Realization Center, to optimize the utilization of capital and operational projects. Similarly, benefitting from the empowering factors that led to the success of MOT with the Center, and unifying efforts to reach the objectives of the Ministry in raising the road quality.