"The specialized commercial courts have become a proud reality in the march of our judiciary. The commercial judiciary has undertaken its jurisdiction through the opening of three commercial courts in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam; specialized commercial chambers within general courts in a number of Saudi cities; and specialized appeals chambers with 173 judges. In addition, general courts in regions have been assigned adjudication of certain commercial cases to facilitate litigation," Al-Sama'ani added. He pointed out that the Supreme Judicial Council made sure, when realizing commercial courts and chambers, to develop procedures for the consideration and progress of commercial cases that helped make the specialization effective, and suit the nature of the cases considered. Al-Sama'ani explained that the ministry had also been working to promote and develop the execution judiciary, since execution was the ultimate fruit of rulings, and since unenforced rulings were practically useless; development projects at the execution level had led to a major shift that resulted in record levels of performance and determination. Al-Sama'ani revealed that the total number of applications for execution received by execution courts and chambers throughout the Kingdom for the year 1438H amounted to more than 444,000, with a total amount exceeding SR193 billion, an increase of 440% over the execution requests for 1435. Commercial documents constituted 75% of the total number of executive deeds submitted to execution courts. He also added that the ministry had launched the “paperless court” project, which cut around 45% of procedures, and shortened the period for execution of judicial orders from two months to 72 hours only by activating the electronic linking system with related entities. This e-link has been activated so far with 19 government agencies to provide around 60 e-services to clients. Al-Sama'ani said that the ministry had started the gradual implementation of the e-link between the courts of first instance and appeals courts to electronically transfer the full case; this would make the process 30 days shorter than before, which expedited the determination of cases. --More 18:46 LOCAL TIME 15:46 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w512635