 Good morning everyone or good afternoon if you are joining us from different parts of the world. My name is Lara Habib and I present business news on Al-Arabiya News channel. It's an honor to take part in the conversations in Davos again this year virtually this time. I'm definitely missing the beautiful Alps but can't say I don't welcome the warmth of Dubai's weather. Hope you and your loved ones are safe during these unprecedented times. Let me begin by explaining the format of the session. The first half is live streamed open to the public. We will then move to a closed lively discussion limited to the shareholders or to the participants of the forum under chat-emhouse rules. You will have the chance to ask the questions throughout both sessions. I will address them in the second half but you can start sharing them from now through the chat feature on Zoom. For the next hour we will go through implementing stakeholders capitalism in Mina a region that had to deal with the dual shocks of a pandemic and low oil prices limiting its fiscal capacity to support its slowing economies. Adding to the challenges one of the highest youth unemployment rate in the world and an ongoing refugee crisis in that aspect what role can stakeholders capitalism play to help the region emerge from this crisis towards a more sustainable equitable and inclusive growth. Where are the priorities and how can both the private and the public sector coordinate and contribute towards a larger impact on their respective societies. Hoping by the end of this session we would have a clear picture on how to take stakeholders capitalism from principle to practice in the Mina region. I'm looking forward to hearing the ideas of our speakers on this topic and happy to be joined today by his Excellency Abdullah Binto UAE's Minister of Economy Mrs. Hanadi Saleh Chair of the Board of Directors of Kuwaiti based Agility one of the leading logistics firms in the world Khalid Ahmadan CEO of Bahrain Economic Development Board and Anna Salfaris President of King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology the Center for Innovation and Research in Saudi Arabia thank you all for being here. Your Excellency the UAE was highly agile in its management of the COVID crisis. We have seen a rather quick return to economic activity and the fast rollout of the vaccine. What role did stakeholder capitalism play in your approach and how did you balance between the safety of your citizens versus the cost of lockdowns on the business community. Thank you first of all I'm very pleased to be here to witness a very strong commitment of the members of Wadi Karam Farm although we're meeting very virtually I believe that this situation doesn't lessen the interest and the euthysiasm of everyone to share the same advanced vision for more inclusive and sustainable global social economic system. To answer your question Lara I want to describe how agility has been a key approach that guided the UAE government practices particularly the last few years and it was one of the main pillar that enhanced the country ability to deal with COVID-19 crisis and we'll then share with you some of the most important recent initiatives. To start off mainly the march for agility and proactive thinking it's under the government long time before COVID-19 with major project pioneers that are the government launched to accelerate the implementation of our national agenda and to boost our future growth. Let me mention four of them. First of all we had launched a couple of years ago the UAE Ministry of Possibilities. This is the world's first virtual ministry to apply design thinking and experimentation to develop proactive disruptive solution to tackle critical issues was launched back in April 2019. It represents the next generation of government operation and how we utilize the virtual ministry to activate proactive services that support business continuity during COVID-19. The second one was the UAE Rec Lab the first regulation lab also a revolutionary approach in the legislation and the regulation system that the government launched back in general in 2019. It designed to proactively anticipate and develop future legislation governing the use and application of emerging technologies. With that said I think one of the major project was in the regular was actually distance learning and distance learning was something was one of the most you know issues that before COVID-19 most of the education educators were actually against. When COVID-19 came in distance learning was actually implemented on the spot this shows you how the UAE was very proactive in actually addressing such issues. The third one I'd like to mention as well and shed some light on it which is the first government accelerator. It's a mechanism where UAE government launched back in October 2016 to rethink how government works by introducing a unique model built on accelerator results and to increase its collaboration and innovation between stakeholders in the government and in the private sector to actually advance towards delivering projects in under a hundred days. And one last one of which is our luck to mention as well which is the Dubai Future Accelerator an initiative by the Dubai Future Foundation that facilitates, collaborates between government entities and private sector and tackling down the major sectors of challenges that the globe is facing. So during the post and the crisis where the post-acrisis the UAE Ministry of Economy as well on the agility aspect led several initiatives. One of them which is very important is a 33 initiative plan. We unveiled this plan back in August 2020 and support key economic sector which had about three phases to roll out. The first the last six months as well we launched a couple of key initiatives working on business continuity and supporting the private sector stimulating trade and investment. Like I said one most important part as well in the UAE and the world we are not expert in pandemic and I think we as Minister of Economy and my colleagues when we joined back on the 5th of July we had no experience and expertise in doing so and we rejoined the ministry the new cabinet reshuffle and we took a step back to understand how can we really unlock issues that can actually help the economy to move forward especially the COVID-19. One of them let me mention a couple of the laws one of them is actually the commercial company law that led to 100% foreign ownership. The other one is a commercial transaction and this led to the decriminalization of the checks. The third one was the improvement and the update of the bankruptcy law that took in consideration pandemics and enforcement rule. The third the fourth one which is the most important one which is the consumer protection law. This is securing market stability in crisis times and regulating e-commerce. The movement of diversifying and changing four main laws in six months show how the UAE government is very agile and moving forward towards actually unlocking the potential of its economy. We're looking to as well to reinforce our anti-money laundering system enhancing measure to support family owned businesses tourism sector and to support the circular economy. As you heard a couple of days ago in the cabinet we actually launched the first UAE circular economy in coordination with the World Economic Forum and this is something which is now we have in the UAE a policy that actually focuses on circular economy not just for the UAE but for the region as well. This is very comprehensive and the work that the the government plays is very pivotal to actually the UAE transition towards a new economy. These efforts from our part is the preparation for our next 50 years. As you know the UAE is celebrating this 50 years this year and this is with our line of the celebration of the UAE centennial 2071 where it can be effectively utilized the fourth industrial revolution applications AI internet of things big data and shaping our future and prosperity. I will come back to that point but I want to ask you here these are great steps that the UAE has taken however we haven't seen cash injections or in the most hit industries in COVID the same way we have seen in other parts of the world especially in the developed nations. I'm talking about UAE or in general the region we haven't seen cash given or handed to citizens directly especially the ones that lost their jobs. So why was not this approach why we haven't seen this approach in the UAE or the region in your opinion. In my opinion I think every region in every country has its own policies and ways of actually anticipating the shock of the pandemic and I think what the UAE have done back in March in April moving very fast we have unlocked about a hundred billion dollars of fiscal stimulus to the to the industry to the economy which allowed people to actually use it in ways that actually can benefit the economy the ways they can keep the jobs still on. I think that's the most important part what we're really focusing at the moment is how can economy of the UAE unlock its potentials moving forward now we say the UAE economy is very fit and fit fit to go to to move for faster as well. Thank you your excellency Hanadi I want to hear your opinion here on stakeholders capitalism. I know that the supply chain and logistic sector proved to be an essential pillar in mitigating this crisis and I know that agility was in talks with governments and producers of the vaccine to distribute it around the world and that that is just one example of the role that the business community can play in stakeholders capitalism. Do you believe that this crisis changed the perspective of the private sector on stakeholders capitalism in the MENA region? I know that thank you thank you for the question and I want to thank the World Economic Forum for hosting me on this panel. Agility has always taken a long-term view with regards to stakeholder capitalism and has always worked with different government sectors historically even during COVID and plans to going forward. Well what we're going through right now with the workshops as you mentioned with regards to the oil prices and also COVID is really taking its toll and from my perspective both the medium and long-term recovery really calls for a change and a call to action because cannot be business as usual. You know one critical aspect is really diversifying away from the hydrocarbon economy and really tackling unemployment. From our perspective these structural reforms that the governments are undertaking while good and strong is really an opportunity for us to harness you know both government and private business collaboration and for us to act both swiftly and fast and collaboratively. You know from my perspective it's critical that the private sector is deeply engaged throughout this process not simply from strategy formation but also into execution. But it is going to need sort of sort of a cultural and mindset shift on both sides you know company boards you know we certainly looked at profitability as a main metric of success and moving to a more inclusive approach and addressing the principles of stakeholder capitalism is going to require mindset shift and also from the perspective of the government you know consulting deeply and executing a partnership with the private sector is taking place more than before but that level of engagement needs to be sustained and deepened over time as we have seen through our experience. You know the good news is we are seeing the evolution of this region you know an ongoing progressive reform and also the desire to track more foreign direct investments is going to help accelerate the strength. I'll give you one simple example in Kuwait specifically through Kadipa the Kuwait direct investment and promotion authority. It is a government supported arm and it works closely with the private sector and over the past few years it has contributed around or promoted around one to one to three billion dollars of foreign investment in Kuwait which is you know active to spur job creation and diversification. But if you ask me I mean you did refer to some of the things that we've been working on but if you ask me about the agenda which is really you know personal and close to my heart and I where I think you know private and public cooperation has a huge impact it's really alongside the SME agenda you know empowering SMEs especially through digital skill sets is a vehicle for growth and diversification for our long-term future. You know if you ask me you know why focus on SMEs you know they're recognized as a you know driver future job creation and also an engine of economic diversification you know from our perspective you know as a private sector you know headquartered in Kuwait and that you know that presumes also for our region is that you know the public sector can no longer be the job provider of first resort you know but together we have to tackle a lot of the issues you know that SMEs face and are well documented you know I'll give you one simple example access to finance it is a major issue and closing that gap alone can contribute you know close to around 15 million new jobs by 2025 in the Arab region according to the IMF according to the IMF and if you're to ask me you know where does private sector play a role it's really in helping them scale up you know through either venture funding incubation training mentorship or even plugging them in our supply chain together the private and public sector can enable sort of an entrepreneurial system for SMEs to thrive with you know if I give you a few examples that what we have done over the past before I conclude my statement is because I can give you I can give you various elements you know number one agility is investing in the remall in Abu Dhabi it's a billion dollar mega mall in Abu Dhabi which is going to be the region's first sort of smart mall and it is you know one of the cornerstones and ideas for this mall is creating a digital academy it's going to host an SME incubator you know the idea is to incubate 100 SMEs representing 4.0 industries and disciplines and you know the goal of it is to create 5 000 plus jobs within the UAE in the space of technology another example is our partnership with the Kuwait National Fund with the Kuwait National Fund you know historically we worked very closely with them and provided SMEs with industrial land to support them at their startups and during COVID we worked closely with them in supporting SMEs which were largely decimated because of COVID and giving them free digital toolkits to move their offline stores online and other areas over the past as we worked very closely with MIT labs and the Kuwait Fund for Advancements of Sciences and Data Hackathons where we've trained you know hundreds of individuals with you know obviously coding toolkits and tackling real-life problems you know what I want to say is you know this private and public sort of collaboration is not new to us you know we've been working on it for years and we're strong believers in it you know we believe this is an area which makes sense for business our economy and our society we've taken a long-term view on it and we're recently qualified for the FTSE for good index and the MCSI index you know I think this is an opportunity for us to work swiftly and together for the future of our economy and our society thank you Lara thank you Hanadi you mentioned so many interesting points and especially the thing about the digital skills PWC in a survey survey among the region CEOs 70% said that the availability of key digital skills is a business threat and that shows us the shortage of such skills in the region although we have the infrastructure or though we have a tech savvy population and high internet penetration but let me go back to the role of the private sector in this crisis in mitigating this crisis and I want to ask you here Khalid I guess we all agree that the mitigation of the of the crisis was not possible without the help of the private sector in terms of digital solutions health services and production and the distribution of the vaccine to name just a few what can you tell us about Bahrain's experience in that matter and how can we build on this public private collaboration for a better future in the region and thank you Lara thank you to the world economic forum one thing that Bahrain we've been doing for many years and we want to continue doing and the sense of urgency is higher now because of COVID is the digital transformation it is the world of fentech and what we see is the adoption the adoption of digital digital solutions today we take a close look at two factors which is number one how many people have opened an account with a pure digital bank and the second thing is how many people are using e-payment solutions the adoption rate because of COVID has accelerated three folds a number of accounts that were expected to open in 2020 before we knew COVID was going to happen versus what actually ended up happening was three folds increase we knew there was going to be an adoption but not at this rate and the second thing is in terms of e-payments e-payments is critical and we see the volume before COVID and we see the volume at the end of last year and it's a three-fold increase and this is important this is important we laid the groundwork many years ago and now it would enable us to cope and mitigate the effects of COVID what we see happening one thing it's very difficult to isolate which sub-sector and fentech is going to do well with sub-sector is going to do bad but one thing is clear is COVID is probably spelling the death of cash the government of Bahrain today no longer accepts cash as a payment method we do not accept cash only electronic payments and that's important this is going to add transparency to the system the government is taking the lead we expect the private sector to follow and we will transition from a traditional economy to a cashless society and a classless economy with that there's going to be a lot of data that data is going to be stored it's going to be analyzed and with that analysis the government will be able to target its policies and regulations to the people and the segments of society that need it the most and businesses will be able to take that data analyze it and provide products and services that are very useful to the consumers thank you Lara are we heading to a nationalization of the data it's now the treasure and keeping it private is very important so what is Bahrain doing in that aspect in in terms of data Bahrain is very clear we were one of the people that had the first hyper data center in the Middle East in order to do that we understood that data has to be protected and people who if we want people to store their data in Bahrain they need to feel that they are in control of it part of what we did was we passed the data jurisdiction law which is the first in the world first of its kind which is if an American company was to store data in Bahrain that data is American no but no other authority has access to that data except the Americans and it's data and the C law that's useful it is going to be difficult in a world where there is digital world data is important who has access to that data is important and if everybody starts to say that this is my data and I'm going to nationalize it it's going to be very very difficult to live in a global world and not only is it going to be difficult it is it's going to inhibit us from able to scale up many of the solutions that we're able to do today are that become cost effective because they're being deployed in multiple countries if every country is going to be so protective over its data and what it's available here we're unlikely to have a platform and a solution deployed in each country in order to scale up there needs to be cooperation between government to governments I want to hear your thoughts Mr. Anas because I know that Saudi Arabia is recently opening local data centers with international companies yes first I'd like to thank the World Economic Forum for the kind of invitation to participate in this session with the extraordinary panelists and thank you as well Lara for the question yes Saudi Arabia is heavily looking at working with many data centers whether and bringing in multiple companies that work in the sphere of data data is no doubt the fuel of the new economies and we believe it's very critical to make sure we include a great deal of that as well thank you I would like to move now to your excellency and if we want to continue the conversation on digitization one thing that we have seen in this crisis is the acceleration of the digitization trend which was already in motion in the region though enabling the digital transformation has been a pillar of national reform plans in the region covered amplified the urgency to adopt it where are the priorities of the UAE in that matter what can you share with us the successful digital models that were implemented recently and how did you make use of the fourth industrial revolution center that was created in collaboration with the web thank you I think what we believe is in the government is the integrated role between government and private sector in achieving this growth the next couple of years will be at the heart of our principle especially in the stakeholder capitalism especially what we're doing with the center of fourth industrial revolution that we're engaging with web and the key partners in the region these principles are not in our values and beliefs in the UAE these are historically the UAE has always promoted a balanced approach to development with key consideration to the role of both private sector and development in modern so the private sector investment the UAE have paid a major role in this establishment especially in the modern economy with generating jobs and growth of human resources promoting transfer of knowledge expertise and technology therefore what we have seen in the COVID-19 very recently and very respectively countries had repercussions pandemic in all of our life our humanity has never been more tested than now and this is the right time to show that we can reap with our lives stronger more resilient with the ideas formed with the fourth industrial revolution especially the center there are three areas that we already started working and developing with the World Economic Forum team to be launched later on this year and these include the crafting and inclusive economic policy of a new social contract estimating an economical integration and lasting harness in the fourth industrial revolution the main initiative that we are working on to become more vibrant hope for the cutting innovation R&D is more on the digital asset services primitive approach towards investment we also look to measure under the umbrella of the security and the commodities authority the type chair to allow the issuance of digital assets crypto assets and tokenization of financial instruments and commodity and the regulation of the licensing of national activity related to crypto assets namely exchanges crowdfunding platforms and other financial activities in addition these are industry that will be impacted most by the organization are some of the major drivers behind the social economic development such as financial services real estate public sector venture capital commodities and startups and with the fourth industrial revolution something we will focus on practical trials of this technology this year in the tokenization project we will explore the tokenizations of SMEs venture capital funds and real estate as well we are supporting the ethical development of AI powered education tools the center is a part of the larger mission to be a leader in the fourth industrial revolution globally established back in January 2019 Davos and as a collaboration between the divide future foundation the world economy farm the center develops technology which govern across three focus area AI blockchain and position medicine it's worth to mention as well that the fourth AI has only been driven by the public sector in the UAE for example 2014 we are we we we know the national innovation strategy 2016 we had the block the bi blockchain strategy really authentic strategy in 2017 the way for the revolution strategy in 2018 the federal blockchain strategy in 2019 and the national AI strategy as well on that year so you can see that the UAE is proactively working towards that especially working with the center and what we're doing at the moment is experimenting both in the in the UAE as well with both public and private sector and as can I have your thoughts here because I know Saudi Arabia has also a fourth industrial revolution center Saudi Arabia recently announced the digital economic policy to encourage investments in innovation and digital transformation and we have seen also the open banking policy that can help fintech in what fields do you think the kingdom will compete and what governance measures should be in place to balance between the efficiency and data privacy to ensure the protection of different stakeholders sure so let me before you before I answer the the question Laura I might I think it would be important to just first draw attention to the technology and innovation context that's currently enabling the fourth industrial revolution in the kingdom there's no secret that we we have ambitions to be a tech hub in the region and beyond the vision 2030 deployed many national vision realization programs with defined objectives that include unlocking potential of non oil sectors growing and diversifying the economy as well as nurturing and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship culture in fact the national industrial development and logistics vision realization programs currently aims to transform the kingdom into a leading industrial and international logistics platform and in several promising areas that were defined in the industry as well as the industry 4.0 as a key enabler for the industrial sector and recently the crown prince announced the new five year pif strategy that will focus on localizing cutting-edge technologies and and and knowledge with the very strong objective of partnering with innovative and transformative and disruptive companies around the world with with of course the goal of serving as an important catalyst for the development of industries and opportunities in the future we today are seeing progress on the ground and in the case of the pif the assets under management currently reached more than four billion us dollars and with with the aim of increasing that to over one trillion us dollars by 2025 and we also are seeing a living example and a new which is becoming a living laboratory and a hub for innovation and model for new future cities in fact even in the digital infrastructure the kingdom has been investing heavily it deployed its ict strategy 2023 which was launched back in 2018 to transform the kingdom into digital digital and powerhouse um uh it the kingdom also established uh recently the saudi data and ai authority sadaya to position to position the kingdom as a global leader in uh in data driven economies um uh it's also announced uh its strategy for data and artificial intelligence in in which it indicated that the country will be investing over 20 billion uh in a our projects by 2030 again uh as a result we see that Saudi Arabia now ranks first among g20 countries in the digital rise of report which analyzes ranks and changes that countries around the globe have seen in their digital competitiveness over the last three years it's currently also ranked fourth globally in terms of five g technology and 10th in terms of internet speed according to the ministry of of communication technology um in its innovation system we are today we've been investing heavily in our nis national innovation system by by developing several programs initiative that support innovation and rnd as a result currently we're ranked first among Arab nations in regards to number of publications we're also ranked first according to the edge index which measures quality of research output as well as first among uh Arab nations in granted patents per per capita uh this hopefully we hope would lay the ground to an exceptional trajectory of of innovation in in the kingdom uh like uh his excellency dog we also have been interested and deployed our um a c4ir center in in the kingdom uh with with the objective of of again supporting this transition we're looking at um the wef affiliate center uh was introduced after a meeting between his royal highness prince Muhammad bin Salman and and the wef sborge brinde um we are uh looking at it as a vehicle to support the future of 4ir in the kingdom through working with stakeholders to uh co-create co-design and pilot new approaches to technology adoption uh we've been looking at uh multiple projects under multiple dimensions uh whether it's in ai and ml iot robotics drones and autonomous vehicles blockchain smart cities or in agile government governance and and we've started deploying several uh projects uh they include the smart corridor project which is about autonomous trucks and autonomous truck platoons which we're engaging now with the ministry of transportation in the kingdom uh to develop policy and regulatory frameworks for connected autonomous vehicles now we're also looking at heavy lift drones and development of policy development for with the so the general authority of civil aviation and ramco to develop and enable regulations that can serve as a test case for um heavy lift drones for delivery we're also working with the ministry of environment water and agriculture on uh precision agriculture to develop frameworks to allow drones and ai for image processing navigation to be used for uh agricultural applications including spraying pesticides uh monitoring crops so growing health and and beyond impressive plans indeed