Abu Dhabi: Group Chief Executive Officer of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), Alex Thursby, has said that Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) are the world’s growth engine of economies, and must be given access to capital, tools to enhance their potential.
He added that the world is facing economic slowdown amid low potential profits for multinational companies in addition to a large number of restrictions on the creation of wealth on a large scale.
Thursby said that the NBAD funds gap for small and medium-sized enterprises in the Middle East even as many banks step back from the risky business of funding them. He also expressed concern that governments, in their efforts to introduce more regulations to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crash, have erected too many barriers to wealth creation.
“Policymakers in the financial industry as a whole must nurture the entrepreneurism of our small to medium-sized businesses,” he said yesterday at Global Financial Forum organised by the bank in Abu Dhabi.
Access to capital
He added, “SMEs in today’s world must become the growth engine of our economies, and we need to give them access to capital, provide them with tools to enhance their potential and not burden them with excessive or unnecessary regulations.”
In the second half of last year, the bank put more than 100 business owners through courses using help from institutions including Moody’s and the Dubai-based corporate governance institute Hawkamah to help SMEs get a better grip on managing finances. It is aiming this year to train 250 businessmen and women and 600 SME owners.
UAE government officials have been counting on small businesses to play a key role in the development of the economy. SMEs account for 86 per cent of the workforce in the private sector.
Europe
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Finance Minister, spoke of overall challenges facing European countries, including immigrants’ crisis, debt, the single currency crisis and prospect of the United Kingdom exit from the European Union, as well as future of the European institutions. He pointed out that the EU has dedicated its focus on how to pretend to apply the laws that are impossible to apply. “European countries claim that their economies will solve their problems through accumulation of more debt that cannot be tolerated.”
On the immigrant crisis, he explained that while poor countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are able to receive millions of refugees, the wealthy European countries cannot, attributing the reason to what he called “horrendous structure”.
