Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Minister of Hajj and Umrah Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah reaffirmed his ministry’s commitment to supporting technological solutions and professional administrative systems that provide the best possible services for the Hajj pilgrims. Addressing a session, titled “Entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises in serving the guests of God” on the second day of the Hajj and Umrah Conference and Exhibition in Jeddah on Tuesday, Al-Rabiah highlighted the ministry’s efforts to boost the number of initiatives available to entrepreneurs. These initiatives aimed to facilitate the provision of guidance services by ensuring the presence of companions proficient in different languages to assist the pilgrims, he said.

“During the year 2023, the Kingdom hosted 13,550,000 Umrah pilgrims coming from outside the Kingdom for the first time in history, an increase of five million and a rate exceeding 58 percent over the year 2019. This is regarded as a high growth that makes us strive to provide better services to the guests of God,” he said.

Al-Rabiah stressed that one of the important Vision programs is the ‘Doyof Al Rahman’ program, which is among the basic pillars of the Vision program’s goals by enriching the experience, including the role of entrepreneurs in providing distinguished and exceptional services to the Guests of God, as these numbers stand out as a great and amazing opportunity for all entrepreneurs.

The minister noted that entrepreneurs are always creative, and the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah seeks to provide services through the Nusuk application and support them with everything in serving the pilgrims. “The ministry also launched the Nusuk Business platform, which provides its advisory services and support programs to innovators, startups, small and medium enterprises, large institutions, and application service providers (ATPs), developers, as well as the non-profit sector. If the idea is available and the entrepreneur lacks data, the Nusuk Business platform provides a database that allows them to submit a request for specific data from the platform to develop their own platforms,” the minister added.

Participating in the session, Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Hajj for Planning and Digital Transformation Eng. Abdulaziz Al-Muthami stated that the Kingdom has a distinguished experience with small and medium enterprises in adapting to the changes and has proven their worth during the coronavirus period. He also referred to the international challenge launched by “Monsha’at” in cooperation with major countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia, which is an artificial intelligence challenge that has created services to help Hajj and Umrah pilgrims, and that is in cooperation with the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah