Arab conference to focus on sustainable development goals

Muscat: The Arab Conference on Public Administration Governance began yesterday under the theme “The Path to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals in the Arab World.
The three-day conference is being held at Grand Millennium Muscat Hotel under the patronage of Darwish bin Ismaeil Al Balushi, Minister Responsible for Financial Affairs in the presence of a number of ministers, undersecretaries and participants.
The conference will discuss three themes touching on the tracks of corporate governance in the public administration and the challenges of applying the corporate governance to achieve the sustainable development.
Darwish bin Ismail Al Balushi, Minister Responsible for Financial Affairs, said: “The government attaches great importance to governance as an effective tool in developing performance and developing competencies in government administration, and also strengthens the principles of transparency, commitment, accountability and governance and represents one of the main themes of the Oman Economic Vision 2040.
“This conference today is an evidence of the importance of governance, which provides a good opportunity for participants to review optimal experiences and expertise.”
Sheikh Khalid bin Omar bin Said Al Marhoon, Minister of Civil Service, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), said during the opening ceremony of the Conference, “The governance and the application of its principles in the governmental sector is an increasing global trend. The Sultanate attaches great importance to it, as it adopted the governance and institutional performance as one of the pillars of Oman’s vision (2040).”
Dr. Nasser Al Hattlan Al-Qahtani, Director General of the Arab Administrative Development Organisation at the Arab League, said, “The conference aims to shed light on the role of corporate governance in developing public administration systems and the best tools and mechanisms for their application, as well as to benefit from Arab and international experiences in their various activities and then explain their role in achieving goals of sustainable development plans.”
The conference included, on the first day, two working sessions. The first working session addressed the paths of corporate governance in public administration and touched on the role of activating institutional governance mechanisms in promoting government transparency principles and their implications for achieving sustainable development goals, the role of governance in improving and developing the services and financial performance of institutions.
The second session addressed the institutional government tracks in global management and discusses the impact of the application of governance in the public sector on the quality of provided services.