The Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani met today a group of major hypermarkets owners in the Kingdom of Bahrain to discuss means to promote goods consumer products manufactured in Bahrain.

During the meeting, the minister appreciates the continuous cooperation between Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and traders, noting the importance of cooperation between public and private bodies and activate social responsibility in supermarkets to achieve the public interest for the traders and consumers.

In this regard, the minister calls the owners of the supermarket to contribute to promote national products by encouraging the Bahraini manufacturers to promote their products in the local markets. In addition to open the market to entrepreneurs and owners of small and medium enterprises to introduce new products and enhance food security.

The Minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani received this morning Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani, they discussed several issues and topic of economic concern and joint Gulf action in trade, industry and tourism fields. As well as means of enhancing cooperation and integration among GCC in those areas.

They also reviewed cooperation between the Ministry of Industry, and Commerce & Tourism and Secretariat General of the Gulf Cooperation Council in administrative, regulatory and the protection of industrial property areas. And to consider the use of advanced services provided by GCC Patent Center in supporting national offices, inventors and developing external relations with international organization specialized in intellectual property and industry.

The Minister accompanied the Secretary General in a tour to a number of ministry facilities and front offices, in particular offices of Precious Metals & Gem Testing, Investors Center and Consumer Protection, where the minister briefed on the services provided by the ministry.

In this context, the Secretary-General appreciates the successful efforts undertaken by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism to enhance economic growth in the Kingdom and provide a stimulating environment to attract investments and develop of industry, commerce and tourism sectors.

The Directorate of Standards and Metrology at the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism starts to prepare the draft of technical regulations for new design for liquefied petroleum gas cylinders transport vehicles as a mandatory national technical standard. And prepare all the requirements to ensure the safety transport of the cylinders in vehicles travelling in residential areas.

This came in implementation of the recommendations of the 51st meeting of the National Committee for Standardization and Metrology, which was chaired under the Minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani to adopt mandatory technical requirements for gas cylinders transport vehicles.

The Directorate of Standards and Metrology held a meeting with concerned parties to put and define these requirements. Where they discussed the requirements of the vehicles carrying gas cylinders.

The Director of Standardization & Metrology Mrs. Mona Alalawi indicated that an awareness campaign will be implemented with the new requirements once the draft of technical regulations completed. This will help to implement it smoothly. An appropriate transition period will also be given to the concerned commercial sector to adjust their status in accordance with these requirements.

The minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism, and Chairman of the National Committee of the World Trade Organization headed the 1st meeting of the Technical Working Group of the Trade Facilitation Agreement emerge from WTO committee. The meeting was held at the Ministry's premises in the presence of representatives of government and private bodies. 

At the beginning of the meeting, the minister welcomed all team members, as this team will create a platform for further cooperation and exchange views to implement Trade Facilitation Agreement, which will directly contribute to develop trade with the trading partners of the Kingdom of Bahrain, as well as raise the levels of economic development in the country. The team aims to enhance coordination among all concerned ministries and public and private bodies in order to ensure safety and efficiency to implement all procedures Bahrain Trade Facilitation.

The technical working group of the Trade Facilitation Agreement was established based on the decision of the WTO National Committee in its eighth meeting in accordance to Article (23) of the Trade Facilitation Agreement and was entered into force on February 22, 2017 for all WTO countries members.

The National Committee for Standardization and Metrology adopted the technical regulations for plastic products in implementation the decision of the Ministerial Committee for Construction and Infrastructure at its 136 meeting held on July 18, 2018 to assign the Supreme Council for the Environment in coordination with the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and the Legislative and Legal Evacuation Authority to take the legal measures to issue necessary legislation to reduce and regulate plastic bags. 

This came during the 51st meeting of the National Committee for Standardization and Metrology, which was chaired today under the Minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani, in presence of committee’s members and representatives of public and private sectors, where he welcomed the new members of the committee that was restructured by the Decision of the Council of Ministers No. (32) 2017.

The Committee adopted 23 international standards as an optional national standards, which support to the technical regulations on plastic products as well as the technical regulation of electrical appliances 

In this regard, they reviewed committee’s duties in term of general policy of standards in the Kingdom of Bahrain and adopting national technical standards and regulations and forming technical committees to study standards to ensure protection of merchant, manufacturers and the consumers.

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The Minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani received Moroccan Ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain Mr. Ahmed Rashid Khatabi.

During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relation between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Morocco, and ways to enhance it to meet the leaders aspirations of the two countries, especially in the economic aspect. The minister stressed the importance of exchanging experiences in industry trade and tourism fields.

The Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism Mr. Zayed Bin R. Alzayani delegated Assistant Undersecretary of Resources & Services Mr. Abdulaziz Mohamed Alashraaf to inaugurate the new website www.moic.gov.bh​  during a press conference held on 1st of August 2018 at the Ministry’s premises. The website was revamped as part of the ministry's plan to develop and upgrade its services and its e-services in particular to all related sectors.
On this occasion, the minister confirmed, "the Ministry seeks to enhance the principle of electronic transactions through developing its website to include all services required for both the trader and investors and in a way that saves time and effort. Redesign and engineering the website comes in line with the development of all ministry’s sectors, especially the services sector provided to customers.”
Chief of eCommerce Applications Section at the Directorate of eCommerce and IT Mrs. Maram Al Mahmeed gave a detailed presentation on how to use the website and how to benefits from its services. She also presented the new look of the website which includes options to access various services that were dispensed with the old method of browsing the sites and accessing a number of navigation lists to get the required information. This was replaced by providing simple search, plus, the use of filters to assist visitors in reaching their goals in record time.
Mrs. Al Mahmeed also explained how to use the tagged information feature, which will create a link between all the content of the website to facilitate the process of reaching the goals. She pointed out that the new website has been designed in a practical way so that any piece of information can be tagged and linked to other information in the content. For example, if a search took place for a specific information, then, the labeling system will assist to recall all the related information and/or the researched information.

The Ministry's new revamped website is characterized by its ability to interact with the user through its dynamic nature, the visual presentation that it provides as characterized in the ease of the transition between its pages, and the fact that it focuses on the visitors needs to reach their goals as soon as possible. In addition to its ability to change its content around the visitor's needs, it also facilitates access to basic information and motivates to discover more through a unique and carefully prepared design accordingly. The main advantage of the newly designed website is its innovative feature when applying tagged information. As this gives the ability to collect the largest amount of information, and choices that shares the subject of visitor’s search, plus, the ease of transmission between them.
The website is structured in a horizontal layer of information form, a method that allows development, expansion and the growth of the website without affecting its performance or its entire content. It is also designed to reduce the effort and the cost for the future development process in a flexible manner that helps to maintain the site’s performance and continuity of delivering services even during maintenance or major development. As well as the flexibility to easily navigate the content and the visual animation based on graphics in order to achieve the highest levels of interactivity with the visitor when accessing various services and benefit from the site in general.
The aim of the new website is to strengthen communication bridges between the service provider represented by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and traders and investors, as well as to provide the highest degree of professionalism and high quality electronic services.
The new website design is responsive where it responds to the screen size of the device being used.
The Ministry intends to launch a promotional campaign for its website before the start of the second phase of development. The second phase focuses on providing the website in more than one live language from around the world to ensure access to even a larger segment of the Ministry's clients and visitors from both inside and outside the Kingdom of Bahrain.
 

The Ministry of Industry, Commerce & Tourism launched Live Chat services for commercial companies and individuals institutions registered with the Ministry. 

This service allows the investors to chat directly with the customer service center directly through “Live Chat” and the customer service staff will immediately respond to all queries and answer all the problems that may arise. The service is available through official working hours from Sunday to Thursday from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm.