<The National Exhibitions and Conferences Program (NECP) has revealed its achievements during the first quarter of 2018, reviewing in a detailed and statistical report the achievement rates of initiatives to implement the program's strategic objectives and themes. <The report stated that (3013) business events were licensed during the first quarter of 2018, mostly in the sectors of healthcare, education, technology and communications, economy, trade, consumer goods, retail and professional services, with an increase of (21%) compared to the first quarter of 2017, and the share of the Riyadh region in these events reached (49%). (49 %), Makkah (30 %), Sharqiya (15 %), Medina (3 %), Qassim (1 %) and Asir (1 1 %), in addition to conducting (65) field visits to evaluate exhibitions and conferences, issuing (31) warning and penalty decisions according to the system and stopping (16) unlicensed business events.

The report indicated that the number of initiatives approved for the program amounted to (90) initiatives branching from (23) strategic objectives, and that the actual achievement rate of the initiatives reached (76%) until the end of March 2018. The report noted that the most important achievements of the National Program for Exhibitions and Conferences during the first quarter of 2018 were preparing the final report of the program and submitting it to the Council of Ministers, approving the organization of the envoy program and opening the door for registration of envoys through the program's electronic portal.

The report also indicated that the program's accounts were launched. The program's social media accounts were also launched, and 204 tweets were published on Twitter with 811263 accounts interacting with it, 29 posts were published on the program's LinkedIn account with 14133 accounts interacting with it, and 9 videos were published on the program's YouTube account with 120 thousand viewers interacting with it.

Among the achievements mentioned in the report are the approval by the Director of King Faisal University in Al-Ahsa of a diploma course for event management, providing (121) professional consultations for investors and workers in the meetings industry, publishing and broadcasting (36) media materials about the program and the meetings industry in the Kingdom, and distributing (9) reports on international developments in the meetings industry.

Accomplishments mentioned in the report include