DUBAI, 5 December 2006 — Prince Faisal Bin Salman, chairman of Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), stressed that governance was a key issue in terms of dealing with change and the opportunities it presents. He was addressing the plenary session of the fourth annual Arab Strategy Forum (ASF 2006) at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai yesterday.
Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid Al-Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the three-day forum that will continue through tomorrow. The plenary session titled “Creating Opportunity from Change” featured speakers from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt, as well as a presentation by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
“Over the last 10 years, the government, its agencies and the private sector have been adapting itself and moving toward management by objectivity, transparency and good governance,” Prince Faisal added. “The mindset has begun to shift.”
Giving the opening address, Egypt’s Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif emphasized six components of the future regional development agenda, citing the resolution of the Palestinian issue as the core solution for alleviating tension in the Middle East.
Nazif said while globalization represents the major economic challenge for the Arab world, “there is an urgent need to align all our resources, realize our strengths, identify our weaknesses and determine a way to overcome them in a collective effort.”
The session began with a strong call for change in terms of diversification of the economies of the region and the building up of a strategic corps of human resources with a skills base to meet the present and future needs of the Arab world. “The diversification drive is very crucial to development. What we need to do is to create jobs that are related to human capital. The challenge is to capitalize on diversification,” said Sheikha Lubna Al-Qassimi, UAE minister of economy and co-chair of ASF 2006.
Mohammed Al-Madi, vice chairman and CEO of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), pointed out that education was the key to managing change. “Without education you cannot do anything. We have inflation at 1.5 percent and population growth at 3 percent and economic diversification needs to take place,” said Al-Madi. “We must invest in human resources and not just in quantity, but in quality too. While we build assets we should also build human assets.”
The Internet is going to be the greatest enabler of change in the Arab world, said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google.
“Very smart human resources in the Arab world are going to go into the Internet and create new markets,” he added.
