for more than forty years, i have suffered from injustice, arbitrariness and backwardness of the ministry of commerce, among other ministries, of course, because of strange and ridiculous requests, especially when requesting an ordinary or extraordinary general assembly meeting. what i mention here is not an exaggeration. at the end of each financial year and after the budget of the company is prepared by its auditors, the owners of companies submit a request to study the budget, after providing copies for study and opinion in its terms. after reviews and a question, often with no answer to it, and waiting which sometimes lasts for weeks, the budget is either rejected or accepted, as i said, if there are no observations. the concerned department of the ministry will ask the owners of companies, and no exception here, to hold their assembly meetings to submit a draft of the ordinary or extraordinary agenda, according to the circumstances, to the department, which is usually most provocative and exaggerative in its requests and wishes, sometimes determines a month to complete the consideration of the draft agenda. after correspondence, review, write-off and change, the agenda is approved upon the order and desire of the ministry official. the company will then print the agenda as requested by the ministry, fill out many other forms related to the company’s data, partners and managers, etc., and wait for several weeks until the responsible official set up the date for holding the general assembly meeting, which is often held at the offices of the ministry at the ministries complex. the general assembly meeting is held at the scheduled time in the presence of shareholders representing the minimum shareholders of the company (or owners) to ensure quorum, and in the presence of a representative from the audit office of the company. sometimes the representative of the ministry of commerce is absent, and the assembly shall be declared null and void despite the fact it is he who sets the date of the meeting. those present for the meeting have either to wait or to leave and look for another date, and this happened to me more than once, but it is often rare. after the approval of the financial statement and the ratification by the representative of the ministry of commerce, without objection, the company is required to print the agenda, to be finally approved by the competent department, and also to provide the ministry with copies signed by the representative for approval of the ministry. after several complaints, the ministry made it a little easier a year ago by putting various applications on the internet, thus reducing personal visits by half, minimizing the suffering, but the unwarranted dominance of business activities continued. when mr khalid al-roudhan accepted the portfolio of the ministry of commerce, after hesitation, we were pleased with him. he is a young man with lot of energy and a well-known commercial background, and he as we expected made a tangible development in the work of the ministry and its departments and subsidiaries. he recently succeeded in passing a law from the national assembly stating that notifying the ministry of the agenda, date and place of the meeting is sufficient for holding the meeting of the general assemblies, and this long-awaited law lifted a great burden from on shoulders of tens of thousands of company owners. we hope he will remain in office to complete reforms.