DUBAI, 26 February 2007 — The UAE has emerged as leader in luring foreign investment, having attracted over $12 billion in 2005, registering a record growth of 40 percent compared to 2004, a recent World Investment Report said.
MENA region was the number one attractor of foreign investments in 2005 “thanks to serious economic liberalization policies and close coordination between the public and private sectors,” said ICIEC General Manager Dr Abdul Rahman Taha. IIEC is a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group.
The UAE’s performance reflects, in many ways, the growing economic successes achieved by the broader MENA region, which recorded the world’ s fastest growth in FDI, Taha added.
He said these achievements are a result of the “commitment by the governments of the broader MENA countries to economic liberalization and integration, and especially toward providing investors with the right business environment.”
However, MENA economies are facing significant challenges, particularly the need to create new job opportunities, Taha said. “We are facing challenges that are totally different than those encountered during the oil boom era, as the new job opportunities need to be created by the private sector,” he said.
Many of the world’s leading economic and financial experts took part in the summit that opened last week at the Dubai International Financial Center. The two-day event was organized by the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and ICIIEC, in association with DIFC. The summit covered a wide range of topics including investment opportunities and obstacles, the rise of Islamic financial instruments, regional privatization trends, the prospects for basic industries, and coping with global competition.
Opening the summit, the UAE Minister of State for Financial and Industrial Affairs Dr Mohammed Khalfan Bin Kharbash said: “The information revolution has created new ways of doing business and has turned the whole world into one community. This transformation has largely contributed to raising the importance of talking about the efforts needed by countries to boost the flow of foreign investment and to minimize risk factors that could affect the interests of investors and financiers.”
“The flow of long-term investment is a major reforming tool for many problems that economies suffer from, enabling integration into the new world economy, the strengthening of national development structures, increased job opportunities, and better competitive advantages,” he said.
Not only the importance of inward investment was discussed, however, but also the “commitment of investors to explore new opportunities and of lenders to find innovative financing solutions for those investments,” said MIGA’s Executive Vice-President Yukiko Omura.
“In the Gulf states, investors and banks are increasingly looking beyond the immediate Gulf region for investment opportunities — either to seek higher returns or because they are becoming global players.” She said the greater role Islamic financial institutions are playing in the region, as well as private equity and venture capital funds.
