 Moon, everyone, we are going to talk today about the mega infrastructure projects that are ongoing in the GCC and the MENA region. For that, I will be here with valuable panelists and the intervention of His Excellency Kamal bin Ahmed Mohamed, Minister of Transportation and Telecommunication of Bahrain. His Excellency, beside being a minister, he is an engineer, civil engineer who holds a master in project management from Leeds University. He is also the Economic Development Board Chief Executive, the Vice-Chairman of Bahrain Mumtalaqat and heading the Higher Education Council and many others. Your Excellency, you are more than welcome and if you can give us an opening note. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I've been asked to give an opening remark to stimulate the discussion of our wonderful panelists. We all agree that infrastructure is fundamental to enable economic and social development. All nations are investing in their infrastructure to enhance their competitiveness, to attract foreign direct investment, to stimulate their private sector to create new jobs in their countries. The infrastructure, of course, vary from one part in the Arab world to the other part. I can talk here a little bit about the GCC countries and I think the GCC country has utilized efficiently the revenue they generated from the oil over the last three to four decades to build what we can see today, the state-of-the-art infrastructure, the physical basic infrastructure that enable us today to enhance our competitiveness. We see it in the ports, in the airports, highways, electricity and water generation, etc. So I can say it's an advanced stage in the GCC countries, maybe it needs to be developed more in the other part of the Arab world. And therefore, of course, we will continue investing and expanding our basic infrastructure because simply we are growing. We need to have additional power generation, we need more highways, we need more expanding our airports. We are building a new terminal but I think currently the GCC countries, I can say most of them, are focusing not in the physical infrastructure but they are focusing in the digital infrastructure simply because we want to make sure that we maximize the benefits and we capture the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution and the digital transformation that's happening currently. So in Bahrain, for example, we spent the last four years making sure that we have the right national broadband network in our countries and we aim by end of 2019, 90% of Bahrain will be covered by high speed fiber optic network. We hopefully, inshallah, by May of June or end of June, we will be among the first country in the world to offer commercial 5G services. Again, we are working with international organization to attract them to our countries, to provide us with the digital infrastructure, the smart infrastructure and we are happy to have Amazon web services opening their first hyperscale data center in our countries and this is the focus nowadays in the GCC countries. Not only to expand our physical infrastructure but to focus more in the digital, smart infrastructure to enable us to maximize the benefit to create the quality jobs to really realize the digital economy and the knowledge based economy. Of course, infrastructure is one part of it, we need to invest also in create the ecosystem in our human resources, human capital, our regulation, creating the ecosystem access to fund access to, we have number of several accelerator and incubator and we consider them infrastructure because they are the institution required to develop the ecosystem, the digital ecosystem. So the infrastructure are different today than what used to be in the past. So in the past it is mega projects only like airports and ports but today I think the infrastructure is more of institution and facility that you need to have or infrastructure like the fiber optic, the 5G network that a lot of people may be telling us why you need it today? There is no customer for it but we know that it is coming, having it today especially in a country like Bahrain which can be done easily. We are a small island so we can afford to do it and we are encouraging as a policymaker the operators in Bahrain to develop this infrastructure by incentivizing with our legacy let's say ability to incentivize them to invest in Bahrain and expand the network. During the last five years $700 million has been spent to enhance the telecom infrastructure in Bahrain which is the backbone for the digital economy. So I think as I said it's different from one part of the airport to the other part of the airport. In the GCC the physical infrastructure is well developed, we will expand it because we are growing and we need to grow it but I think the focus now in digital infrastructure making sure that we make our countries the hub to test and develop the next generation service and product. This is why today you may see my colleagues from the ADB talking about startup, talking about the fintech incubator that we have created in Bahrain because we want to make Bahrain a leading innovation enabler, the best place in the region to as I said attract those who have the new ideas that will create the future product and services. Thank you Your Excellency, in fact you insisted on the digital infrastructure which is essential especially that Bahrain is known for being the banking sector hub for this region. So obviously it is clearly mandatory to have a digital infrastructure. Thank you Your Excellency. Let me continue with our debate by presenting Stephanie von Friedberg who is the Chief Operating Officer of the IFC, universally known. In addition to you seeing the business development of the IFC, you are delivering capital to create jobs and positive development outcomes for the most needy population in the world. You manage 55 billion US dollar debt and portfolio across more than 100 offices around the world and you started your career in the World Bank as I understood and you specialized at one point of time in Africa and Western Europe namely Russia in the post-Soviet Union era. So welcome and we are glad to have you with us and let's start the debate. Today we are seeing 2.4 trillion euros or dollars budget in the GCC countries. Basically we are talking about infrastructure, railroads, roads, we are talking about Neon, we are talking about many mega infrastructure projects ongoing in the GCC and even beyond in the MENA region where I believe you are operating. How do you see these infrastructures and how do you see it accelerating if possible, being more feasible, being more to the ground? How do you visualize the future of these projects and how can the financing be part of this adventure? So first thank you very much, it's an honor to be here. We actually see infrastructure as a core pillar to what we do. So it is a key piece of our strategy. We actually don't invest in the GCC but we invest more broadly in the MENA region and we believe that infrastructure increases competitiveness and it creates long-term economic growth and as a matter of fact the World Bank did a study very recently and jobs are important for the MENA region. For every 100 million dollars of investment you have in infrastructure you create somewhere in the range of 50,000 jobs directly and indirectly. So in addition to providing the core infrastructure you need to run your economy you are also creating jobs and growth from that. We also think that there is about 100 billion dollars of need in infrastructure in the MENA region year on year just to keep pace with growth. So the opportunities for infrastructure are huge. In the countries in which we work the governments lack fiscal space to continue to make those core infrastructure investments, roads, water, airports, ports and our view is the only way that will happen is to crowd in new sources of finance. So patient capital that's been sitting on the sidelines that can actually come into some of these larger infrastructure investments that can be done by the private sector. So we focus primarily on private sector infrastructure development through public-private partnerships, through private companies who are looking to invest. We have very big pipelines in Iraq, in Jordan, in Egypt. So we see opportunities in the MENA region to be very good and very strong. Great. In fact, I will turn to Marie who is joining us, Marie Nazel Bataine. I saw your profile yesterday. I browsed a little bit and I was impressed, I have to say, with what I saw. You're a barrister, you're a founder and chairperson for Landmark Hotel and founder of Seventeen Asset Management. You're also an activist, you're a young global leader. You're holding a BA in political science from Barnard College in Columbia but other low degrees as well and you've been chosen by Forbes as one of the most powerful Arab women for many consecutive years. That's an impressive CV. We are happy to have you with us here today. Before the session you mentioned that you wanted to insist on the private funding brought to infrastructure projects, not only in the GCC but in the MENA region, which is pretty well echoing with what Stephanie just said. What is your vision? How do you see it accelerating the infrastructure projects in our region? Well, I think there are various new finance products that we can be using to accelerate infrastructure like blended finance and that's something that I would like to talk about more extensively and it's something that my company Seventeen Asset Management is really focused on especially for Jordan and the neighbouring countries but just to step back I think it's really important to see infrastructure as an opportunity to accelerate the positive social impact that we can have on people. So how can we use this deployment, this huge deployment of capital into infrastructure to have this positive impact on health and education and women and youth and refugees? This is a huge issue and the good news is that the sustainable development goals of the United Nations provides us with a great development framework as to how we can use infrastructure to help advance the SDGs. So we have SDGs directly related to infrastructure but the incredible thing is that there's implicitly you can use infrastructure to impact other SDGs like poverty, the environment, SDG5, on gender equality and the other very interesting part of using the SDGs as a framework when we talk about infrastructure is we can look at impact measurements. I mean how do we really know that the infrastructure projects that we're doing are having that really important positive social impact on people and the environment. The SDGs allows us to do that and I think if we take this way of thinking, looking at the problem, what are the problems that people are facing like women going to work in Jordan which warrants a transportation system, if we start looking at what are the challenges that people are facing, what are the challenges that we're facing when it comes to the environment and then establish that empathy and start co-creating those infrastructure projects from the ground up, you're more likely to have a positive impact and you're more likely to have the stability that we're looking for in the region and I think only if you take that way of looking at it will you have that stability and 17 asset management is coming in to advance this way of thinking. That's why we've created our company, to try and drive capital towards the sustainable development goals, capital that's previously been untapped. Great, that leads us to Thierry Do and also is a captain of industry in financing. Thierry, I saw your background and you are leading many institutions in France. You are also an engineer from a reputable university in France, Pons-et-Ceux-Sais and you are running now Meridium and you're going to tell us about this company or chairing it but before that we are talking here about financing of infrastructure projects and before the session we spoke about the fact that GCC countries might not be the first ones to be interested in foreign investments especially for infrastructure. You are investing in other parts of the Arab world, tell us more about your priorities, how do you see investment namely from the private sector into infrastructure and is it extendable to other domains than roads, rail roads etc. Thank you. First I'll vote for Mary because after 15 years of doing sustainable infrastructure as a policy and a scope for our funds we actually adopted two years ago an SDG driven sustainability policy and that allows us to focus our investment on the highest impact but also able to report and measure impact because I think part of the difficulty because of SDGs were initially set up for government to sort of define their policies but as the industry is adapting it it's making it a bit more practical and concrete in terms of implementation measurement and so one can be credible in measuring but it does require good methodology and data gathering and reliability of data but the reason I mentioned it is because it drives where we invest and it also drives the way we invest so we do invest in a number of countries of the Arab world I mean obviously most of the African part but as well in Jordan and all the way up to Turkey and Egypt and what we focus on is what we think the government should be focusing on which is the priorities in terms of where impact needs to be created so then it will very very much depending on government's priority I mean obviously if you think about Jordan and the issues with refugees and sort of permanent refugees and then the necessity to cater a population for basic services I guess we less talking about mega digital infrastructure that we are talking about basic needs but of course this is for the Jordan people to decide what their priorities are but we we try also and this is something that we've been doing in Jordan and this is SDG 17 to partner with IFIs in particular to provide support because I think one of the big obstacle to infrastructure proper investment whether you want to invite private sector or not but to select the right one and to design it the way it should be and to address impact and social needs is that there's a lack of capacity generally because there's a lack of shared experience and I think a number of IFIs and IFC has actually sort of pivoted a few years ago into supporting early-stage thinking and development of project but this is fundamental to actually achieve the right impact but also to unlock the investment because a lot of them are sort of stuck in bureaucratic processes and somehow lack of experience often but this is rather global not not only in the MENA region and so that that's a very important part of what we do we do work a lot upstream with government and in this particular region where we have a partnership with EBRD we try to support and bring ideas and other ways we also that extend to the blended finance that you were mentioning years ago in Turkey we were able to bring with EBRD and IFC was actually part of that with the MIGAF as part of the World Bank Group able to issue a bond in Turkey for a hospital in Al-Azig that actually allowed us to achieve a rating that is still now probably about three or four not she's above sovereign rating in Turkey but allowed investors from international investors to actually feel comfortable investing there so it's all about bringing and partnering between government the IFIs have a fundamental role and to me they should be the sort of new leaders of how to create impact through their power of patient capital their power of concessional capital but also their power of structuring and advisory to bring all of us together but on the other end as sort of private sector investor we manage today about seven billion euros from institution around the world and they invest for very long term with us the 25 years funds that we have they also need to see this impact they also need to take responsibility for whatever we're creating and and that's sort of virtuous circle of partnership can actually allow these countries when focusing on the right things because I as much as I'm an engineer and I like to build big things I also know that this usually not a good idea you have to think about it twice before you invest a lot of capital into a big infrastructure without thinking about the impact great and we'll come back to the driver of these investors that are willing to come in in the region and their driver beside SDG the green impact of or not of these infrastructure we'll come to that point but before that I will I will welcome Bishoy Azmi who is on the execution side of once these funds are found he's the chief executive officer of ASGC which is a group in the United Emirates a construction leader you're an ACUN as we say in Egypt you are you are graduated from the AUC and you're holding a master of science in international construction management which says it all about project management in in construction you're leading on a multinational contractor employing 1600 people and generating nearly one billion US dollar in revenue welcome Bishoy my my my question to you about after we heard what what drive the investment willingness of the of the the investors my question to you is how do you see these infrastructure projects ongoing currently in the Mina region and in particular in the GCC how do you do you see them transforming how can we accelerate them namely in execution from financing point of view but also from execution point of view how can we accelerate the execution of infrastructure projects okay well actually in the GCC construction is pretty fast so in the GCC is a fairly advanced group of countries in terms of basic infrastructure funding is available government has recognized a few decades ago that basic infrastructure is a good idea and they've spent on it generously so where I come from Dubai for example is a very advanced city in terms of you know hardcore infrastructure and the speed of construction and the speed of delivery and the speed of arranging funding for these hard infrastructure facilities is honestly already sort of pretty advanced even in comparison to the most advanced developed countries around the world I'd like to say that because we're talking about Mina so we have sort of a tale of two cities if you like where some countries already have a very advanced hard infrastructure and have the funding available and some countries do not and as we can see from entities such as IFC with Stephanie or even private financing arrangers like Radium and Thierry that the funding dynamics for the GCC are different than the funding dynamics for other countries in the Levant and North Africa which are also part of of Mina and I think that there's availability of funding for both but I think the question now is how can we efficiently use the dollars available whether it's government money in GCC or funding through international agencies or finance providers or export credit agencies or private sector in North Africa and Levant how can we use this dollar spend in the most efficient way so so you see in your in your field the technology becoming more influential in the in the way you use these these fundings software digitization in your world totally so the dollar spent on on soft infrastructure goes a lot more than a dollar spent on hard infrastructure and sometimes we actually overspend on on hard infrastructure when you know the country doesn't need yet one more glamorous x y or z but it needs enablers it needs young people to be incentivized it needs a paradigm an environment and a framework so we're too hard on infrastructure as ports and harbors and airports and you know roads and shopping malls but it's all now about creating that environment for I mean we we have a region with the highest percentage of young people in the world right so we need to see how we focus as policymakers or as governments or as investors you know our efforts in that direction so how can we support the young and how can we actually develop the country it's probably through soft infrastructure so through connectivity through laws through frameworks and incentives quite quite interesting knowing that we see now the digital world coming in quite heavily in the world of construction which is not obvious at the first site but is now becoming quite impressive with BIM concept the BL concepts in your construction field and knowing that 10% of the of the of the projects are wasted today in material so the optimization and efficiency can be obviously a solution for sure and I would even argue that probably more than 10% of material is wasted through also inefficient designs so if you look at how much money is spent on infrastructure and you say if we can more intelligently forget my first point about what we built what if I go now to your point as how we built it so if we say let us design it more intelligently let us manage the entire process from the moment we arrange finance and its lifecycle cost how do we run this airport how do we run this hospital we can save not 10% 20 30 40% it's really ridiculous how much inefficiency there is in hard infrastructure and this money can then be plowed back into more infrastructure right so the issue is not the funding the issue is the efficiency across the value chain great which is by the way interesting for the fundraisers to be to be confident in the project execution and its efficiency I come back to this question related to the interest of the financiers and the investors in the minor region Stephanie what is the IFC looking at beside the traditional SDGs that that we can we all know what are you looking at in a project in its feasibility if we speak about its green CO2 impact are there other concepts that you look at before financing a project there's been so many great things said we could take this conversation in many different directions but let me start by saying that I think of IFC as the mother of all impact investors so we've been at this for 60 plus years we breathe and live impact and impact means meeting the SDGs it means doing the right thing for the environment it means ensuring that you have the right social compact it means ensuring that you have the right governance inside of an organization and to which you're investing so we look very holistically at that and as a matter of fact this week this coming week is our spring meetings and I would invite you guys to be participants we're actually launching what we call the impact principles and the really about saying invest with intent around impact around environmental and social and governance say what you're going to measure measure it and use an independent third party to validate what you're doing so impact is something that we live and breathe in every one of our projects not just an infrastructure and what I actually think we need to focus on in men and maybe goes a little bit beyond that and it goes back to something you were saying Terry so between 1993 and 2013 there were only a hundred and fifty one private infrastructure projects built in MENA between 1990 and 2018 59 billion dollars in MENA that's less than any other region in the world including Sub-Saharan Africa so what we need to focus on and where we are focusing is how do we actually create the environment the policy and regulatory regimes and the ability for private sector infrastructure projects to happen and then help bank them and again using impact and using our development tools so that we're actually doing the right thing for the environment and for society as we're developing those I think it's critical and I would include amongst that digital infrastructure so Terry you said basic infrastructure roads water when I look at MENA in particular and you talk about the development of the fourth industrial revolution and the ability to employ the youth people talk about doing it via new technologies that will not happen unless we connect every single person in the world the internet and while it's not a men a statistic there are about 60% of the people in Africa who live dark they are not connected to the internet and yet we want to give them 5g that's not going to happen you know in the countries in which we invest in MENA there isn't 5g there's not access to 4g it's mainly 2 and 3g and I was actually in Lebanon a couple of weeks ago talking to a bunch of guys that have an incubator and I said well where are you storing your data we use AWS and Rackspace in London and in Europe so no it's good that we now have one in Bahrain but no big data centers in the Middle East so to think about digital infrastructure as being a luxury and being bifurcated from the other core infrastructure I think may actually be a mistake for the region great so that's that's an important insight so digital infrastructure is considered as a basic need nowadays I consider it a basic need I consider it no different from water and power so affordable reliable access to the internet is critical to the future that sounds great for a technology company like Minesh neither electric we are specialized in that so good news for us Mary what would you like to say about what had just been commented by Stephanie digital infrastructure I mean you're the guru here so I'm not gonna disagree with anything that you say but I think digital infrastructure is really important when it comes to getting women in the economy so in Jordan where I'm very active in terms of trying to encourage women to join the workforce and hospitality in other areas women's economic participation rate is about 14% so if you really create that digital infrastructure you create new jobs where women can be working from home there's some amazing local startups like crystal call that has set up back office services in the north of Jordan and the government and his majesty are really keen on making Jordan sort of this back office support and also a center for R&D so I think that digital infrastructure is key coming back more broadly to financing I think Jordan has some great examples on successful PPP projects obviously the airports and the Samara wastewater plants has been a very successful example and they're also looking to expand and looking to attract additional capital for that but I think just to speak a bit about blended financing if I may I think really this is a way for Jordan and and Palestine as well to be attracting private capital because essentially what blended financing does is use public capital concessionary capital like donor funding or IFI funding or whatever to catalyze private investment therefore de-risking so a 17 asset management we're using blended finance as a key tool to attract private investment into Jordan the right kind of socially responsible private investment and they're increasingly more and more institutional investors and backing the SDGs and looking for investments that have a return but also have a social return so our first product as 17 asset management is something we've called the SDG Jordan growth fund where we're looking to hit investments that also impact SDG 5 gender equality because that's a huge opportunity like I see the gender gap in Jordan as a huge opportunity for growth you have 14% of women in the workforce but you have over 50% of women who are highly educated how can we provide these women with SDG 8 decent work and economic growth so our investments through the SDG growth fund will be going to companies that have a positive impact on gender and also SDG 8 which is decent work and economic growth so I think using blended finance is also important because you take that public good that donors and IFIs have committed to like you said for so many years and you take the commercial interest that the private sector has and you bring it together and I think for infrastructure in particular that's the kind of capital you need you need socially responsible capital that is sustainable and is looking for a broader purpose but but do you really find private equity investors who are really interested in SDGs? Absolutely you have institutional investors like pension funds insurance money high net worth family offices you have millennials that are really interested in where their money is going so I support a social enterprise in the poorest camp in Jordan which is called SEP and SEP has been successful we make luxury accessories for the global markets and it's a social impact company that's serving the poorest refugees in Jordan and millennials and other consumers are interested in SEP and looking to buy SEP products because they know that it has that is having a positive impact on people who need it the most so certainly there's an increasing chunk of people that are looking for a positive social return on their money but in addition to that by using blended finance you're de-risking that investment for people who really just want a profit so for the SDG growth fund for Jordan the first 20% is a first-loss commitment so that means that safety net is there for the investor anyway so for an emerging market like Jordan you need to be de-risking investment you need to for the meantime and slowly that balance will shift from public capital dependency to one that has more private capital coming in and that's our intention to start telling the Jordan growth story to the world using the SDG growth fund and then start attracting a new private capital I think what one thing I want to you shouldn't associate SDG with just social it's a holistic approach you know SDG includes logistic chains that are efficient includes climate change includes clean energy provision includes energy efficiency includes good jobs and economic growth so when you're building a port and a rail to export to it you you actually creating impact in a framework that can be measures with the SDG so so just to be provocative you don't have to be a responsible good person to invest in SDGs so that's why the investors are very much looking at it some of them because they are responsible and they want to create a certain type of impact and you have people that are gender focused or economic growth focus or climate focus but you you can also provide with this methodology and approach and focus sustainable cash flows for these people what they're looking for is something that's going to last and bring their money back at one certain point and many investors can actually buy this story with with SDGs so you you you don't necessarily have to overemphasize the fact that you have to be responsible I mean the SDGs were voted by the whole UN assembly that means that other countries in the world almost kind of agree that's that's the thing to do it's it's the next public good and so financing public good one way or another has to become an interest for every investor around the world and clearly I mean we have a pool of investors that finances around 80 around the world they all very diverse and some have different type of engagement in terms of their social responsibilities are very strong and some are sort of just indifferent but the fact is it works for them because when they fire in invest in a 25-year fund and that can tell them this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it it's also a better deal the the second point that I wanted to to add to the conversation is is not necessary to and and SDGs are good for that actually oppose digital to the basic service the question about digital is sometimes people think of it as as a goal in itself you always have to ask yourself what for and why and and if you I mean if I take your point on efficiency of infrastructure today we're using big data to do preventive maintenance on major infrastructure and you can't do that unless you digitalize your infrastructure and unless you able to accumulate a lot of data I mean there is no roads in the US where we invest where we don't use mobile phone traffic data to actually figure out what patronage would be so digital has already got into infrastructure efficiency so if you use it for that purpose at the same way you can use it to give access to jobs to women and then there's a purpose and and where I always get a little confused is when people talk about the tech as the tech you know the tech is to create jobs is to service some things or to make something efficient but it doesn't have a purpose in itself and that's a personal thanks I have with it you show it do you see it coming the SDG needs or mandate in your project in the in the GCC do you see it raising more than before so I mean the GCC is as I said is different from the North Africa and the font in that they already have the hard infrastructure their local population does not suffer as much from unemployment or you know low GDP per capita so maybe we we don't feel it as starkly as other parts of the Mina or Africa for example we now have in the UAE for example the Minister of Climate and Environment was speaking here yesterday and there's a recognition that the carbon footprint of this massive construction frenzy is not the best in the world so there's certainly considerations to that and we have local sort of regulations that are similar to lead and other environmental sort of compliance standards to improve environmental compliance so certainly from a climate perspective like you said it also makes sense from a business perspective that you need to be more efficient so you could be you know concerned about trees but you could also be concerned about your financial sort of position and it makes sense from both that's the beauty of it so I think the the key takeaway is that they need to be more efficient and intelligent so the onus is on us or the onus is on governments or the onus is on policymakers the money is available the logic for sustainable development goons is there and ticks all the boxes how we actually executed what we focus on you know will will govern the results great thank you maybe we can open the mics for questions if any the gentleman over here thank you very much Samal Kordi from Saudi Arabia listening to everybody talk I find it extremely interesting and educational whether it may be the ecosystem the digital infrastructure or the physical until I start thinking about the impact of this financing on on the financial position of these countries that are receiving whether it may be budget deficit whether it may be the country's debts whether it may be the impact on its currency I worry about that all the time and I'm you know especially after what happened in Turkey in the past few months socially responsible financing is very interesting but it still shows a debt in the in the in the financials of these countries so what we need to do I think is come up with a real innovative system to finance and especially I was in the 5g session yesterday and cost involved there is way beyond any digital infrastructure in the past and I worry about the impact of these finances unless it's done locally with local money with local investors then the impact will be so much less I'm gonna be zero it's gonna be a lot less than coming money coming from abroad and and so when we talk about developing the infrastructure I think the impact of financing is particularly foreign financing needs to be very carefully taken into consideration so history of Turkey doesn't is not repeated again thank you thank you I saw another lady here can take a couple of questions before hello I am noor keek from the Ministry of Public Health in Lebanon working in the National Mental Health Program I'd like to build on a question that you asked to the speakers which is in terms of SDGs what are the non-traditional SDGs that we are looking at when you speak about infrastructure and as some of you may know one of the SDGs 3 SDG3 is focused on health and it includes a focus on promoting mental health and well-being and mental health is actually a cross-cutting issue to all SDGs because it relates to the ability of people to achieve their potential to study to work to build social relationships and yet if we look at our world we speak about increased digital connections and connectivity between people but we also see an increase in social this connectivity between people this connection so and this is one of the key determinants of mental ill health and actually worldwide the prevalence of mental ill health is one in four and it concerns every each and every one of us because any of us may go through a mental health condition at any point of our life so my question is how can we integrate these considerations and ensure policy coherence to make sure that our infrastructures that we are investing so much in actually are contributing to promoting the mental health and when being of people and not contributing on the country to decreasing people's well-being. Thank you. There was another question there. Hi my name is Niraj, I'm from the Crescent Group and we build energy and port infrastructure in the region for the last 50 years. I think with the gap between the fiscal break-even point and the oil prices, long-term availability of capital will be an issue in the region and my really question back to you was do you see new sources of financing being USPP for example? We recently tapped into it for building a port in US and we got 20-year financing. We haven't seen examples of that in the region and it's a group of 50 to 60 sort of players who contribute up to a hundred billion dollars or so and I wonder if there's a model for that to adopt in the region. One last question lady. Thank you. My name is Simon Effete, I am the Managing Partner of the Invest Corp Aberdeen Infrastructure Fund and newly established funds. My first question is to Stefanie. So you mentioned that in the MENA region you only focus on North Africa and the Levant rather than the Gulf region. While these countries certainly or at least most of them not need the funding, I think they need a lot of assistance with regards to the delivery. Infrastructure projects delivered through private sector, I don't think they have mastered the art of that and the procedures and the legal frameworks that come with that. So I think they will benefit from a lot. Also a comment with regards to your intervention earlier. I think it's very important to be able to manage the debt position of these countries using private finance to finance infrastructure and I think what is important is some of the money that is sitting with sovereign wealth funds should make its way back probably to these countries. It is high time that instead of financing growth in other countries it starts financing growth in their home markets. Thank you for this question. Maybe we can group question one and three about alternative fundings and the impact on the depth of the countries with the new sources of financing that are experimental in other parts of the world that could be replicated. Who wants to take that? I can take the difference of Turkey to start with because I don't believe that they've gone into problems rather than private sector went into problems for being leveraged in hard currency. The country debt itself has been rather unaffected but they do have obviously fiscal pressure for new obligations. I think part of we should be careful about not mixing everything. When you finance economic infrastructure with private sector government has absolutely no debt obligation not even any fiscal payment obligation in it. Whether it comes from outside unless they really want to take contingent liabilities like guaranteeing forex or things like that then it's a rather controlled way. I mean obviously it is better if local funding and long-term local funding funds their own infrastructure and unfortunately it's not available in many countries and even in a country an OECD country like Turkey when you have seven year debt and you're trying to build hospital in 30 year concession contract it's rather impossible and if Turkish government attracted GFI's and private sector investors and debt funders to do it is because they could actually make it affordable and therefore by creating the 15 billion portfolio of health services then they created with that. I mean it's not without problems we shouldn't deny that but the impact that they created versus the potential impact that they could have created just by doing it locally is a huge gap. So you have choices to make and it's not all black and white but I would definitely support more local funding in infrastructure but there are limitations to that. I also definitely would support sovereign funds stop investing in OECD's and investing in their own country but that's not for me to say. Maybe I can jump in so let's start with local currency. Local currency financing is critical. If you look at our book of business in Turkey for example about a seven billion dollar portfolio more than 70% of it was fully hedged so didn't bother us really what happened in Turkey. So in the middle-income countries there are hedge products that are available you can protect yourself. In the more difficult markets is where actually finding the local currency to do long-term infrastructure projects is hard and this is where we're using blended finance so again we are a commercial investor we do well by doing good but we are beginning to realize that there are areas where additional support from donors and from other institutions can really help us so we actually use the IDA balance sheet so IDA is the poorest part of the World Bank and we blend local currency through the IDA balance sheet so that we can bring 10-15 year local currency into some of these markets so that we actually don't create distortions as we do private sector and infrastructure projects and if you look for example at our book of business in India now where we started with Missala bonds 100% of our business in India is rupee based so if you borrow money from us in India you're not borrowing dollars or euros or anything else so we consider local currency to be a critical piece of our business and something that has to grow going forward because we we're not going to get where we need to go by putting even private sector hard currency loans into many of these markets and then in terms of attracting additional patient capital we know it can be done so we created a product called MCP which is our multi-company platform and in essence what we did again using a piece of blended finance from the Swedes pulled down the risk portfolio of our infrastructure portfolio and we're able to say everything that we invest in using that first losses triple B so we have brought seven or eight very very large insurance and pension companies with us they invest beside us in all of our infrastructure projects so we're able to attract the kind of capital that we need that's long-term that's patient and for the you know the insurance companies and for the the pension funds what they're saying is really interested in infrastructure really interested in doing this in emerging markets not capable of doing it on a deal-by-deal basis to understand the risk and by the way we needed a we you know we need a rated instrument or we need something that we can actually rate so MCPP is an example of where again using blended finance using very small amounts of first loss you can attract a lot of additional capital we also have our AMC which is our asset management company and the reason why we founded the AMC in 2009 was to do exactly what you asked how do we take sovereign wealth funds who were coming to us and saying let us invest beside you in your equity positions but again not really capable on a transaction by transaction basis deciding whether or not it was a good equity investment so our asset management company manages about ten billion dollars of which seven comes from 58 different LPs many of whom are sovereign wealth funds that give them an access and opportunity to equities in emerging markets that they otherwise wouldn't have had so again you can create vehicles I believe the capitals there what's maybe not there are the projects in some of the more difficult markets to be investing in the third question we we didn't we didn't take it yet to which is basically about integrating simply the well-being as I understood it the well-being of the people which is what is what is called mental health into these mega projects does it resonate with you it does I think one cautious comment that would make is you know and especially if you want to do as GG properly there are those direct impact that you can have and there are indirect impact that take a long time to measure and as we say the you know the best is often the enemy of the good so when you try to focus on ten different indirect impact you can get lost however I think for having finance and develop quite a number of social infrastructure there's only no country today where as part of the initial thinking of the design and other things that this particular aspect of mental well-being of the people is taken into account I think a lot of architectural firms and things have grown huge practices around this topic and perhaps it could be done even more but I think it's also very difficult to to sort of spread it around when you when you're building a new thing you're creating something in the environment it's almost automatic now that people should do so when you dealing with other type of SDG it's a little more complicated if for example you're creating clean energy you know I don't know solar power plants or or damn to integrate that aspect so I think it's also a question of being pragmatic and also focus if you want to achieve impact because especially in direct impact this is very tough SDG to to sort of cope with because there's health and there's mental health is about everything in there so health is easier than mental health that's why we sort of all have crazy but don't don't accept that we are but so that that's sort of my caution but I think it's a really good point and I think there's been great progress especially when building creating new buildings and new facilities and these things have been taken into account so can I touch on human capital because it is really important three years ago we did the World Bank of did a flagship and we looked at we called it the wealth of nations and in the developed world two-thirds of the nation's wealth comes from its people and the development of its people their health and their education and taking a step back from that we then said are we as an institution looking hard enough at the longer-term development from a health perspective from a stunting perspective in early childhood from an education perspective and what we realized was probably not we had spent a lot of our focus on infrastructure and again we have governments in emerging markets who are very interested in infrastructure because they need to get reelected right and that bridge that airport that road helps them get reelected so we created and launched last year something called the human capital index which was an incredibly bold and audacious thing for us to do but in essence what we did is went in not all countries have done it there's 130 countries that now are ranked country by country against a human capital index that says what are the outcomes you get from your education not the number of years in school but the outcomes that you actually achieve how healthy are your citizens and what does that imply long-term because again if we go back to this notion of digital infrastructure digitization digital economies if you do not have healthy well educated citizens your ability to continue to create jobs in the medium to long-term is going to go away so human capital matters and thinking about human capital health and education are as important as as critical infrastructure at this point great with these beautiful words I will I will invite you to to give a word of conclusion maybe last last word Mary I think I just like to address that question if you don't mind in my closing because it reminded me of the importance of digital infrastructure when it comes to health so there's an interesting Jordanian startup called it to be which is a telehealth also net based health platform that has provided medical advice to people who don't have coverage and they've expanded also to Egypt and they outsource a lot to Gaza so I just think that's an interesting model of how digital infrastructure can support health and of course health is the cornerstone of everything and as 17 asset management we've been sort of mapping sector by sector to see where the challenges are and therefore where the opportunities could be and health for us is number one and we've been engaging with the health care sector including the mental health care sector in Jordan to see what opportunities there could be and certainly their opportunities when it comes to health care for women and children as a mother of three I see that you know other mothers who don't come from the privileged position that I do they don't have access to decent health care for their children so there's definitely room for growth there in addition it's tied to Jordan's strategy when it comes to growth so health care tourism wellness tourism is a big big issue in Jordan at the moment so I definitely think that there's a lot that can be done on health care great we are just on time so I want just to thank you ladies and gentlemen and have a good afternoon thank you