Gift-giving is woven into Saudi business culture — which is precisely why a clear gifts, hospitality and entertainment (GHE) policy matters: it protects genuine courtesy while closing the most common route for improper influence. This guide covers the policy and the register that makes it real.
The policy: thresholds, not prohibition
Blanket bans fail because they criminalise dates and coffee. Effective Saudi GHE policies set value thresholds that vary by role and counterparty: below the threshold, declare and proceed; above it, pre-approval; far above, decline. Add cumulative limits per relationship per year — ten small gifts from one vendor tell a story a single declaration hides. Cash and cash-equivalents are declined at any value, always.
Government officials: the bright-line zone
Anything involving a public official belongs in the strictest lane. ISO 37001 and anti-corruption practice worldwide treat gifts to or from government officials as inherently elevated risk; in the Saudi context — with NAZAHA active and public-sector integrity a national priority — the policy should require compliance review for any government-official interaction, with automatic reporting where your rules require it. Your register must be able to flag these interactions structurally, not rely on free-text.
The register: from spreadsheet to system
A GHE register on a spreadsheet cannot enforce thresholds, chase approvals or compute cumulative values — it can only record what people remember to type. A working register lets an employee declare in under a minute (web or mobile), applies the policy engine instantly (auto-approve / pre-approve / decline by rule), routes sensitive requests through manager and compliance approval with SLA timers, and keeps everything — including declines — in an exportable, immutable log. That is precisely the design of Raqeeb’s GHE module.
Embedding the policy in daily behaviour
Launch with concrete examples in Arabic and English ("a client sends dates at Eid worth ~SAR 200 — declare, auto-approved"; "a vendor offers conference travel — pre-approval required"). Report GHE statistics to the ethics committee alongside whistleblowing and COI data: the three programmes share one goal and, ideally, one platform and audit trail.
- Set role- and counterparty-based thresholds plus cumulative annual limits — not blanket bans.
- Government-official interactions get the strictest lane and structural flagging.
- A spreadsheet register records; a policy-engine register enforces.
- Report GHE, COI and whistleblowing to governance as one integrity picture.
Frequently asked questions
What gift value threshold should a Saudi GHE policy set?
There is no single legal number — organisations commonly set modest per-item thresholds varying by role and counterparty, with cumulative annual limits per relationship and zero tolerance for cash. What matters is that thresholds are enforced automatically, not remembered.
How should gifts from government officials be handled?
As elevated risk in every case: compliance review regardless of value, structural flagging in the register, and automatic reporting where policy requires. Many organisations decline by default and document exceptions.
What should a gifts and hospitality register record?
Giver and receiver, counterparty and type, description and value, date and business context, the policy verdict (auto-approved, pre-approved, declined), approvers, and the audit trail — exportable for auditors and immutable after the fact.
Whistleblowing, case management, conflict-of-interest and gifts registers — one Arabic-first platform, hosted entirely in the Kingdom.