Business | Economy
More than 700 global thinkers gather in Dubai to offer solutions to the global crisis
Global Agenda Summit will formulate some suggestions for the next year's annual World Economic Forum
- By Saifur Rahman, Business Editor
- Published: 13:11 November 20, 2009
Dubai: More than 700 global thinkers from 60 countries have gathered in Dubai to seek solutions to some of the key issues faced by the global leadership in a three day Global Agenda Summit conference that will formulate some suggestions for the next year's annual World Economic Forum in Davos.
"The world is unfortunately in trouble with government's debts piled up and went out of control, consumer debts and mortgage debts have gone out of hands..." Mohammed Ali Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties, chairman of Dubai Advisory Council and co-chair of the Summit, said in his keynote address.
Welcoming the delegates to Dubai, he said, the Middle East economies are better off.
"But in the Middle East, the situation is much better," he said.
"We have limited government debts and consumer debts that are manageable as banks and financial institutions have already tightened their belts.
"We are a region confronted with wars and conflicts, and not quite exposed to such a degree of financial crisis."
However, he admitted that the region has been affected by the global financial crisis.
"We are in a much better shape. However, we do share similar concerns - poverty, unemployment, infrastructure, education and healthcare are not in best shape," he said.
Richard Samans, managing director of the World Economic Forum urged his fellow members to come up with some suggestions for the next World Economic Forum annual meetings to be held in Davos in January, that will help the global leaders to come up with better solutions for the global problems.
"There is a sense that the world was not well served...crises creeped due to complacency by world leaders," he said.
"The crisis has served a very important lesson...the cost of complacency has been terribly high. There has been structural weaknesses in the global financial system," he said and asked his fellow members of the Global Agenda Council to come up with solid recommendations to fix these problems.
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