Arab business community to meet in Doha as Arab World Competitiveness Report 2005 is released

The Arab World Competitiveness Report is the first attempt to measure and benchmark the performance of the Arab national economies. This year's edition will provide profiles for 12 countries, based upon the Forum's Growth Competitiveness Index, as well as analysis on specific impediments to effective reforms in the region.

The Arab World Competitiveness Report represents a tremendous tool for the Arab business community to monitor progress for enhancing the business environment in the Arab world, and challenging public policies with tangible arguments.

"This Report is a contribution to the debate on the policy requirements for implementing a new vision for the Arab world," notes Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Programme. "In centuries past, the Arab world was a thriving centre of knowledge, learning and innovation. Its peoples long ago demonstrated their capacity for enlightened, creative engagement with the rest of the world, in ways that left an indelible mark on the course of civilization. A return to that golden age requires a clear comprehension of the problems and challenges which the region faces today, an acceptance of the need for change, and the formulation of viable paths of reform."

The business community will be represented at the meeting by the Arab Business Council, the organisation of the Arab private sector which emerged after the publication of the first edition of the Arab World Competitiveness Report in 2003.

The Arab Business Council acts as a business roundtable in the Arab region, working at the national level for deeper reforms. Members of the ABC will play a considerable role in the Arab Competitiveness Roundtable, acting as the voice of the Arab Private sector. In that respect, the Arab World Competitiveness Report strengthens their position by providing them with an instrument to assess reforms efforts.

"The World Economic Forum is pleased to give its support to efforts by Arabs from all walks of life, but particularly from business, to deal with the clear problems that the region faces," says Fred Sicre, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum. "This is a region with the highest population growth rates in the world, home to more than one quarter of the earth's total unemployed young people between 15 and 24. Without true home grown reform there is little hope for the several million youths who are entering the job market each year", he added.

To lend its support to this process, the ABC is now bringing about a number of National Competitiveness Councils - independent entities representing all sides of the society, whose only purpose is the improvement of competitiveness by reproducing the process of the Arab World Competitiveness Report at the national level and on a regular basis, providing a tool both for the government and for the civil society to implement better policies. An Egyptian Competitiveness Council has been created last year. Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and the UAE are following. And the Arab Competitiveness Roundtable will be the opportunity for members of the ABC involved in this process to benefit from the expertise of the Forum's economists and other participating academics, business leaders and government officials.

Participants at Saturday's Roundtable will be welcomed by the Heir Apparent to the Emir of Qatar, H.H. Tamin Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa al Thani. Augusto Lopes Claros, Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum and director of the Arab World Competitiveness Report 2005, will introduce the main findings to the participants in presence Mustapha Nabli from the World Bank and Ismail Serageldin from the Alexandria Library, who contributed to the Report, as well as representatives from the Arab Business Council and H.E. Marwan Jamil Muasher, Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan.

Participants will then have the opportunity to discuss the main issues highlighted by the Report during breakout session on the various challenges facing the Arab economies, such as improving the investment climate in the region, achieving greater gender equality, stimulating trade in the region, and diffusing the unemployment time bomb.

However, the Roundtable will try to reflect the major impediment stressed in this year's Arab World Competitiveness Report: governance and its critical role for the implementation of a deeper reforms process in the Arab world. In this regards, the Arab Competitiveness Roundtable will have the privilege to host the Special Advisor of the President of Syria, Nibras Al Fadel, to comment on this issue openly for the first time in an international meeting.

Benefiting from its presence in Qatar - which is a pioneer in that sector - the Roundtable will include a special lunch on the phenomenon of independent pan-Arab media, asking the participants to think on the consequences of this new trend on the reform process in the region.

In addition to major business leaders from the Arab region and beyond, participants will also include political personalities from the region, such as H.E. Abdurahman Al Taweel, Minister of Commerce and Industry of Kuwait, H.E. Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al Thani, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar.

Through its strong business drive and through its various thematic innovations, the Arab Competitiveness Roundtable aims at breaking some taboos within the Arab discourse on reforms, helping the region to jump another step forward.