Davos: The World Economic Forum closed Saturday, with business leaders urging resolute action to promote growth and employment, particularly among young people.
"Jobs should be our number one priority," declared forum co-chair Vikram Pandit, chief executive officer of Citi, in a session on the global agenda for 2012.
"Ultimately it is about growth. Nothing creates jobs better than growth."
Fellow co-chair Paul Polman, chief executive officer of Unilever, said, "It is unacceptable that 200 million people cannot enter the workplace."
To drive the new growth needed for full recovery from the recent global recession, governments have to provide the right environment, policies and leadership.
"We believe that governments should set up industry and other sectors for success," said Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, who also served as a meeting co-chair.
"Education and investment in infrastructure are critical."
For Alejandro Ramirez, chief executive officer of Cinepolis, the chief concern must be the widening wealth gap.
"We need to reduce the income inequality we are seeing everywhere in the world that is increasing the backlash."
Speaking during the same session, the two other co-chairs called on the record 2,600 participants at the meeting to translate words into deeds.
Committed
"We need to find new ways of actually working together," Peter Voser, chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell, urged.
"We need to move from debate to action."
Yasuchika Hasegawa, president and chief executive officer of Takeda Pharmaceutical, said: "We should not just be talking; we should be implementing.
"We are committed to improving the state of the world. We are going to do it."
In the closing plenary of the meeting, Klaus Schwab, founder and chief executive officer of the World Economic Forum, said the discussions over the past five days made it clear that the international community should work together to shape new models of governance and enterprise that meaningfully address the concerns and problems that people have.
"We have to make capitalism and the free market much more responsive to social needs," he said.
‘Visioning'
"If business is not serving society, then business is not sustainable."
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohammad Younus, Chairman of the Younus Centre, agreed.
"For such a shift in thinking to happen in the world, there must be visionary leadership," he said.
"We need to spend a lot more time ‘visioning'. Unless we have a vision, we are lost."
