More than 700 experts seek solutions to global gloom

Dubai: More than 700 thinkers from 60 countries have gathered in Dubai to seek solutions to some of the key issues faced by global policymakers.

The three-day Global Agenda Summit conference will formulate suggestions for next year's annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

"Unfortunately, the world is in trouble. Government debts have piled up and gone out of control. Consumer debts and mortgage debts have got out of hand," Mohammad Ali Al Abbar, co-chair of the summit, said in his keynote address.

Al Abbar is also chairman of the Dubai Advisory Council and chairman of Emaar Properties.

Welcoming the delegates to Dubai, he said the Middle East economies are better-placed to weather the downturn.

"We have limited government debt. Consumer debts are manageable as banks and financial institutions have already tightened their belts," Al Abbar said.

"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 downturn.

"We do share similar concerns — poverty, unemployment, infrastructure, education and health care are not in the best shape," he added.

Solutions

Richard Samans, managing director of the WEF urged his fellow members to come up with some suggestions for the next WEF annual meetings to be held in Davos in January, that will help global leaders to come up with better solutions to global problems.

"There is a sense that the world was not well served... crises creeped up 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 have been structural weaknesses in the global financial system," he said.

He asked his fellow members of the Global Agenda Council to come up with solid recommendations to fix these problems.