Address by His Excellency The Minister

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds .. And prayer and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad and his family and companions.

The continuity of generations and the transfer of experiences and a summary of the experiences of parents and grandparents to children to grandchildren, is one of Allah’s rubrics in his universe and a convention of all human civilizations, to keep the torch of civilization brightly radiating its light with what benefits and enriches all of humanity.

At the top of these tools that treasured up these experience and expertise is the book .. The book which gained a great deal of attention of the nations and peoples from immemorial times. It has become the key to science and education, and the source of the start of civilization and progress. This concept has devoted the inimitability of Allah in the Holy Quran as a concrete tangible object in the form of a book.

Therefore, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, since its inception, has greatly concerned with the book in compiling , printing, publishing and distribution. King Abdul Aziz Bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud - may Allah have mercy on him - and his pious sons- may Allah have mercy on them - towards this prosperous era, the era of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz - may Allah save him - the bulk of their interest in science and education and their various means, including books. Noble decrees have been issued approving on of the Kingdom’s permanent participation in a number of famous international book fairs with a unified suite showing what the Kingdom has reached of development and cultural promotion, and highlighting its scientific and cultural production and what it has done so far in the field of scientific publishing for a number of Saudi universities and other government agencies. Culture, in general, is as an effective means to promote books as important cultural products, and also to create a situation of the necessary competition between the role of the national publishers to participate with their best intellectual and knowledge production to keep its position in the market of knowledge, as well as its opposition to such a golden opportunity; to achieve a broad cultural convergence and identify the harvest of knowledge produced by the human minds in various countries of the world, which, in turns, stimulates the development of reading, renew the relation with the book and revitalize its industry.

The Ministry of Higher Education, charged with such international Saudi participation; including those of the experiences and rolling ideas in the supervision the organization of exhibitions and book service at the level of both the Arab and international levels; is contributing to the clarification of the scientific picture of the Kingdom and what it has reached of art literary, scientific and cultural development, through the provision of the lofty intellectual production reached by our dear country. The Ministry of Higher Education ensures the success of this national participation and is keen on achieving the desired goals, both in the formulation of a clear concept of the book fairs in Saudi Arabia or to draw the experiences of the world in the establishment of such exhibitions.

From this fact, and based on those achievements and through those partnership tasks; I aspire to a renewed participation of the Kingdom in the course of all distinguished fairs, through the provision of all brand-new books of our knowledge, intellectual and cultural production to make the world read our culture and make intellectuals, in all regions of the world, learn that we are owners of a civilization and builders of genuine thought.