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Abu Dhabi Is Working On Preparing A Consumer Protection Strategy: DED |
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The Department of Economic Development, DED, in Abu Dhabi is working on preparing a business and consumer protection strategy for the emirate of Abu Dhabi for 2018-2022, in co-operation with its strategic partners in the local and federal government and the private sector, said Mohammed Munif Al Mansouri, CEO of the DED's Abu Dhabi Business Centre. He emphasised the keenness of the Abu Dhabi government to create a flexible AND competitive environment for doing business that can enhance the protection of consumers and the business sector, and increase the effectiveness of the concerned partners. This leads to the achievement of the targeted economic development, encourages local and foreign investments and increases customer and consumer satisfaction in the emirate. He was addressing a workshop organised by DED that was attended by 26 participants, representing 13 governmental and semi-governmental bodies. During the workshop, he discussed the most important foundations of the strategy, its scope of work, and the duties of the concerned bodies. The workshop also addressed the performance indicators and analysed the current status of business and consumer protection performance by reviewing the achievement indicators. Moreover, he explained that the workshop was organised in conjunction with the Gulf Day for Consumer Protection and focused on the preparation of a strategy for consumer and business sector protection by taking advantage of the available improvement opportunities. Al Mansouri also praised the interaction and interest that the participants have shown during the workshop. The participants included representatives of the governmental and semi-governmental bodies that are concerned with preparing the consumer protection strategy over the course of the next five years. He also stressed the importance of collective efforts from all parties to achieve the common goals by adopting the best practices in formulating the legislation, providing support, enhancing awareness, conducting market research and analysis, developing the complaint, inspection and enforcement system, and resolving disputes. The DED's presentation emphasised the importance of creating linked electronic systems as part of the strategy to protect the consumer, provide specialised technical training for the monitoring and inspection staff, activate the role of the bodies that are concerned with consumer protection, determine their specialties to avoid duplication in business and tasks, and improve the internal monitoring procedures. As part of the DED's consumer protection performance indicators, the workshop explained that the time spent resolving consumer protection requests improved by 19 percent during 2017, whereby the average reached 8.6 days in 2017, compares to about 12.7 and 27.7 days in 2016 and 2015, respectively. |
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