The first Manafea Forum will be conducted in Makkah on Monday night under the auspices of Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, the emir of Makkah and the advisor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Prince Badr bin Sultan, the deputy emir of Makkah, will also be there.
The owner and developer of the Masar destination, Umm Al-Qura Development and Reconstruction Company, will support the forum, which will be hosted by the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In order to help realise the objectives of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 and the Guests of God Program, the meeting will bring together experts, decision-makers, and business executives.
With a target of 30 million Umrah pilgrims and 5 million Hajj pilgrims by the year 2030, the first edition of the Manafea Forum hopes to help realise the objectives of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 and the Guests of the God Program represented in enhancing the pilgrim experience. With the participation of government and private agencies, ministries, organizations, and Saudi chambers, it also strives to strengthen the potential relationship between the public and private spheres.
Through dialogue sessions, which will be attended by senior officials and decision-makers, the forum aims to highlight the competitive advantages of the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. This helps to increase the participation of the private sector in the gross domestic product of the two cities. The forum's second goal is to enhance Makkah's and Madinah's support for the "Made in Saudi Arabia" initiative, which aims to boost local industries through "Made in Makkah" and "Made in Madinah" and enable businesses to boost their overall economic contributions in line with the Shareek" initiative, one of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 programmes.
Abdullah Kamel, the chairman of the board of directors of the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, spoke about the goals of the forum and thanked Prince Khaled Al-Faisal and the deputy emir for attending and showing interest in everything that fosters creativity and opens up new opportunities in business and the private sector. He also emphasised the initiatives and resources the emirate had made available to the chamber and the private sector.
In order to strengthen the status of Makkah and Madinah as centres of attraction for commercial activity in the Islamic world, Kamel emphasised the necessity of the forum sessions to improve cooperation and integration between the public and private sectors.The Manafea forum is being held in support of the tripartite agreement, which was signed in December 2022 by the Islamic Chamber of Commerce Industry and Agriculture, the Makkah Chamber of Commerce, and the Madinah Chamber of Commerce, with the intention of making Makkah and Madinah the centres of the Islamic world's financial and commercial activity.
