All over the Arab world, officials are struggling to establish good governance in very difficult situations as their countries go through the political trauma of the aftermath of the revolutions of the Arab Spring. The barrage of depressing political news from these transition economies often hides the hard work which is going on in ministries and government bodies as politicians try to put their countries on the right track to stability and economic growth.
Some of the most interesting sessions at the 2013 World Economic Forum meeting on the Middle East at the Dead Sea in Jordan are looking at what new laws are being put in place to overcome the lingering political problems which make it very hard to engender either private sector or foreign trust.
These political problems take various forms: like the struggle between the Egyptian presidency and judiciary which reinforce doubts that the constitution can last; or the former militiamen in Libya who surrounded the Ministry of Interior and forced through a virulent form of the Exclusion Law which put large numbers of skilled people out of work because they had held posts under the previous regime.
But it is heartening to see how politicians and officials refuse to accept that these major limitations to restarting growth in their economies are a reason to stop working for change. Libya is an example of a country struggling to impose a new sense of good governance despite its political malaise.
Some of the work being done was teased out during an encouraging session on Libya moderated by the ever-optimistic Tareq Yousuf, who left Dubai a few years ago to become CEO of Silatech in Doha and is also on the Board of the Central Bank of Libya. Yousuf pointed out he had taken part in a previous WEF session on Libya two years ago when Libya was in the middle of its revolution, and there was far greater insecurity and worry about the future. Since then Libya has managed government by a transitional authority, held parliamentary elections, appointed a new government, and started writing a new constitution.
The panel with Yousuf listed a variety of ways in which the government is working to build a stable long term environment which will allow the economy to take off. Mohammad Ali Abdullah a member of the legislature and leader of the National Front Party said that the laws are designed to encourage companies who want to invest long term, and transfer knowledge and technology. “We do not want those who take their 20 percent and run away,” he told Gulf News.
Others recognised that it was a challenge to attract foreign investment. Osama Siala, Minister of Communications, described how his ministry was looking for investors as it restructures what had been a state-run monopoly run in a highly personal and unstructured manner by Muamar Gaddafi’s son Mohammad. Siala described how he is writing a new law, restructuring the ministry’s assets to allow foreign partnerships, and trying to create opportunities to build partnerships.
Ebrahim Al Sharif is the Chairman of Libya’s Public Projects Authority, which is tasked with managing $240 billion of government projects, is a huge variety of sectors, including housing, ports and transport, health, education. He described how many of these are legacies for the Gaddafi regime and can be stopped, while the whole portfolio is being reevaluated from the new perspective of whether they benefit the needs of the people, rather than being totally focused on Gaddafi’s personal whim.
Faisal Gergab is on the board of the Libyan Investment Authority, LIA, the new government’s sovereign wealth fund. He described how the LIA was also carrying out a complete re-evaluation of its portfolio, with projects that were often political investments, made with no governance. He also added that the LIA might act as a gateway for a foreign investor into Libya who could take the LIA as a partner, and so avoid some of the legacy legal problems delaying investors.
