 I think we've been very privileged to have his majesty here today, particularly given what is happening in Riyadh at the moment and the visit of President Trump. Because he's still here, he wants to convene some meeting with key people. And two of our speakers today is Excellency Ahmad Fakhouri, the Minister of Planning and International Affairs, and Violetta Bulch, who is the EU Commissioner for Transport. They both have to be called out to a meeting at three o'clock. So they have agreed to speak to us very briefly for about five minutes each right at the start of this conversation. So I'm going to cut a lot of the preamble and I'm going to turn straight to the two of them to just address us for about five minutes each because they have to leave before three o'clock. So we're very pleased to have, I'll start with Violetta, who is the EU Commissioner for Transportation. I have to say in reading your biography, you are an example of a Renaissance leader. You have been an entrepreneur, you've been an executive, you've been the Deputy Minister in Slovenia, you are now the EU Commissioner, and I also understand that you're a black belt in Taekwondo. So Ahmad, be careful. So with that, I would like to give the floor to Violetta. The question that we have framed for her is that we hear a lot about the Yunkar plan in the EU, which is over $300 billion of funding largely into infrastructure. If she can give us an overview about what is really happening in that plan, how much of that is actually new and real, and what is the role that the private sector is playing in that, and what more can the EU do to attract further funding into those investments? So Violetta, the stage is yours. Super, thank you very much and thank you for this quite an unusual introduction, but it's a real pleasure to be here with you, and I will go into this corner that I don't show my back to anyone. But really briefly, €100 billion per year of investment is really my challenge as well, the challenge of transport portfolio and the whole investment portfolio in the EU. And when this commission came on board two and a half years ago, we realized immediately that all the investment needs that we have in the EU, there is no way that member states can cover. So that's why this commission proposed for the first time ever in the history of the EU, really, a special plan that will engage private and institutional investors, invite them on board to join us and to help us to fulfill the gap. Being very much motivated that 1% of increase in transport means 1.4% in four years of increase in GDP. So I'm sorry, in infrastructure altogether where transport of course plays an important role. But that for us is a very important motivation, and I just realized I need to speak slowly because we have translators. So that's why this approach with the so-called Junker plan that is addressing three pillars that are absolutely necessary in order to bring investors on board in a more courageous way, started to pay off already in the first two years and a half. Which are the three pillars? We attacked and addressed the regulatory environment in order to make the European member states environments much more predictable and transparent and stable. So that was the first big challenge, especially for PPPs where most of the cohesion countries, which are the countries that joined EU in the last two cycles, of course they did not have much experience with. The second pillar, which is equally important, is the pillar of a pipeline of projects. In order to really bring investors on board, we had to put a lot of effort, and we're still putting it into pre-selection of interesting projects, motivating member states, ministries, the municipalities to generate the projects that could attract private investors. And that is still ongoing with lots of training, with lots of regional conferences, state-based conferences, but we see that the pipeline is growing. And within that, of course, was really important that we created a portal, a portal where all the projects that we pre-screen and we believe that are okay, together with the European Investment Bank, that are okay for private engagement, we put them on portal where private investors can take a look at them and see what they're interested in. And I'm really proud that over 46% of those projects are now transport projects. And part of that is, of course, HUB, which is advisory HUB, where member states, project holders really, can get free advice how to prepare the investment projects. Because stakeholders in member states knew well how to prepare grants, the projects for grants, but they had very little experience in preparing investment projects. So these are the two pillars that were essential in order to launch also the third pillar, which is the Guarantee Scheme, called FC. European Union, the Commission is managing that part, is offering Guarantee Scheme for projects of strategic value to EU, and in order to decrease the risks, we give the guarantees to those projects, and then the institutional and private investors are more willing to come on board for them, because, of course, before they were too risky for loans. So now, let me be a bit more specific, by 2018, we are planning to do through this mechanism, engage additional 350 billion euros of investments. I'm quite confident now, because after two and a half years, we managed to already engage 197 billion euros of additional investments, where transport at this stage, we are satisfied with 17 and something additional billion euros, but because the pipeline is very strong, I'm sure that we will increase this quite a bit by the end of my mandate. Why is this so crucial? Because the gap is enormous. Right now, I have the biggest portfolio and the budget for grants in transport in EU, which is 24 billion euros, but the needs by 2030 are 700 billion euros. So there is no way that the member states can reach that gap. That's why for us, in order to keep up with the development, this kind of co-financing through institutional and private investors is essential, and we are fully responsible and fully aware of the missing links that we still need to fulfill to continue building the trust and building the environment that is dynamic enough and attractive and stable in order to reach that goal. So lots of interesting projects, lots of interesting engagements, but absolutely necessary ecosystem approach, all stakeholders on board, constantly talking to all stakeholders, exchanging views and co-creating the environment that can then deliver. But I'm very happy to talk later on. I'll be here the whole day till late evening. So if anybody is more interested in this, I'm more than happy to talk to you. I apologize for not being able to stick for the entire session. I hope I was short enough. Yeah, perfect. Thank you very much. We all have, I think, many questions we'd like to ask, but I think we have to hand over to Emad and the Excellency. Thank you for speaking with us. My pleasure, and listen very briefly. And I have a very good ambassador that can follow up on the Jordan case. And Dimitris is in good hands with the IFC. And even Thierry, I think knows very well the Jordan case very quickly. The context for us as Jordan as a middle income country, which is a non oil middle income country, infrastructure development is an imperative for us. It's critical for our growth agenda. It's critical for poverty alleviation, for competitiveness, to help us attract investments, and to create local development. Without infrastructure, you can't actually address all of these issues. The second part is very much the resilience and adaptability of Jordan. We always figured out that the infrastructural needs are getting enormous. And if we are to stay at par, for example, with our colleagues in the GCC, we are very much centric to improving services to our citizens, then we need to really keep accelerating the development of our infrastructure. And hence, given the size of the economy, the fiscal challenges, it became a no brainer that we need to involve the private sector. So that was how this got born. It got born out of a need, and it made sense that we start involving the private sector. And immediately, we went on initially few mega projects. How do we package few mega projects in infrastructure that could actually set the stage and allow us to build the regulatory environment, start continuously improving it? And we did, and we started few cases. Our biggest was, of course, with the help of the IFC, for example, was our airport that you came through in a month. So this was a very successful PPP that had brought in a wonderful consortium after a very open, tendering process, good technical support from the IFC for project preparation, for feasibility. And we have Gulf investors from the UAE, from Kuwait, with Jordanian investors, with Greek Cypriot contractors, with I report the Paris as operators, all together developing and operating this billion-plus project very successfully. And the door opened up. We moved into a new era where we introduced a new advanced PPP law to really set the stage and a new renewable energy law. And all of the infrastructural sectoral laws started to add language about PPPs and the use of private sector to deliver them. And very much, I'm pleased to say that in the past 10 years, we have packaged over $10 billion of PPP projects, very successfully in Jordan, in transport, in water, in wastewater, in IPPs, in power plants, in renewable energy projects, and in big urban development projects. And we are about now to push the envelope, start in the social infrastructure, schools, hospitals, move in that direction. And the vision for Jordan, we have launched a 10-year vision of the Jordan 2025. And we're looking now at a growth plan for the next five years that's very much focused on continuing the business, the doing business reforms, improving the laws always, keeping them at par with the requirements, because it's a continuous improvement process. And we took a very bold decision to do two things. One, to adopt a public investment management framework with the help of the World Bank and the IMF, meaning we want to start looking at all the capex of the government upfront, seeing the value for money, the cost-benefit analysis, especially for the big and medium-sized capex, to determine whether we should do it in the first place, but also using the cascading approach of the World Bank and the IFC, and look at, can I actually... The first question I should be asking, if there's value for money and the cost-benefit analysis shows that that's a good project, then the first question should be, can the private sector do it? Not the government implements. Then when I run out of money, the remaining priorities I try to find and spend them off to the private sector. No, we're reversing the model where we're gonna, starting with the capex next year, actually go through it, especially the new, obviously, capex, and start the question with, could the private sector do this? Should they be doing this? And then that's the starting point in the analysis to doing that. And finally, one last note, I'm pleased to announce in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the OECD, that Jordan is launching on behalf of the region, the SDEP initiative. We were the only region in the world that didn't have the Sustainable Development Infrastructure Partnership initiative, and it's meant to be basically a center of excellence that we all work together as countries in the region, the GCC, the Levant region, North Africa. We continuously look at what are the projects? How do we get the financing for that? What are the best practices that we need to continuously adopt? And I think it's important that we all work together as a region to keep deepening and pushing the PPP agenda going forward. And I can tell you, this is an incredible experience. It's one of the most rewarding ones that I've seen from a development point of view. I always use the example, which is a public example, my Egyptian colleague, Counterpart, and we always mention the stories of the airport in Cairo and the airport in Amman, where that one was funded by government and you got all the misdesigns, inefficiencies, and not a good operation. And you compare that and contrast it with a similar project, budget-wise and everything, but you let the private sector design it and construct it, finance it, and operate it, and you really see a big difference. And I think for us as governments, we need to push this agenda to infect all governments across the region that you really need to use the PPPs. Finally, I think the challenge is gonna be scaling up. So for Jordan, the IFC at the World Bank, IMF meetings announced that we're the largest, I think, country in the world to have used PPPs relative to the size of its economy and population, if you take it as a ratio. But for me, it's still not enough. It's really not enough to deliver on the increasing needs that we have to do. So Thierry, I think, would do a great job to talk about how do we build on the scale it up? How do we get into green bonds? Things that are new to our region where what we've done was a good base, but we really need to move in a new iteration of sophistication in doing the PPPs across the region so we can scale up and we can create more economies of scale and efficiencies. And forgive us for having to leave to the meeting, but I think you have a great panel that can do a wonderful job to follow up on the setting. Billette, Ima, Ima, thank you very much. Great start. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Well, we can all declare victory and head off, I think. So I thought that was a very useful introduction. I have to say that I've been reading a lot about infrastructure and the importance of the private sector coming in and co-investing with government and the search for PPP. And I've always been a bit skeptical. I've heard a lot about the theory. I've understood the need behind it, but I don't often find many examples of where private money has really played an important role in funding infrastructure until I came to Jordan. And every time I come here, every time I come through the airport, I've been coming here for more than 20 years, I now understand what PPPs are and what they can do for a country. And this is one, I think, one of the best examples of where PPP has been very successful and you can actually touch it, see it and feel it. And it's a great example. We have now got a distinguished panel where we can turn to, and I think the translators will be happy to know that they can also talk a bit more slowly because we have a bit more time to have the sort of discussion that I think that we hope to have. As a bit of a context setting, I'd like to say that I think that at the moment, everybody seems to be doing it. The Chinese are doing it. They did it last week with the One Belt One Road Forum, where they talk about $120 billion or so of investment to improve regional infrastructure, to tie everybody more closely together and to make sure that we do more efficient and effective trading. The Russians are doing it with the Eurasian Economic Union. The Turks are doing it with their middle corridor. Africa's doing it with Africa 50. As we heard, the EU are doing it with the Yunker Plan and even the WEF is doing it with their sustainable infrastructure development partnership. So everybody at the moment is looking at infrastructure as being an area that is both essential in order to be able to bind the world together, to build bridges. It's also being looked at increasingly as an attractive arena for investment. And who knows, in the next couple of days we might actually find out that the USA is doing it as well. There are lots of rumors floating around that one of the main reasons for or an important reason for the Trump visit to the Middle East is that they're going to announce very large US infrastructure funds into which the Gulf countries will contribute. So this broad discussion around infrastructure and infrastructure investment clearly is a discussion of our time. Again, my background, I'm currently head of the quarter, but for 30 years I was with McKinsey. I headed the, and founded the Middle East office. We were pulled into looking at infrastructure funding a lot and the PPP case was strong in theory. It seemed to struggle in actual traction with a number of notable exceptions. So I'm very interested to find out now from our distinguished panel how things are evolving and what's actually happening on the ground. I would like to start off, if I may, talking to Hassan Al-Thawadi. Hassan, his Excellency, is the Secretary General of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee. He is narrowly responsible for the building of the stadia, the seven to eight stadia that we hear all about. That in itself is about an eight to $10 billion infrastructure investment. But the more interesting part about what Qatar is doing is the World Cup is really just a catalyst for nation building. There's at least a 10x infrastructure investment program going to support the stadia. And so Hassan, if I can, I think everybody here would love to know a bit more about what actually is happening in Qatar at the moment. What is the thinking around the scale and nature and purpose of the investment? And particularly, what role is the private sector beginning to play in funding some of this? Because so far, it has been primarily government funding. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start off by saying thank you very much for having me here. And I apologize for the translators. I speak fast. So that's already bad enough as it is. So I'll try to speak slow. As you correctly mentioned, just to give a brief background, when we bid to host the World Cup, the country had already announced its 2030 national vision, which is based on four pillars, economic diversification, human development, social development, and environmental sustainability. The plan was that it accompanied also a significant and robust investment and upgrade in terms of infrastructure development. That ranged from significant investment in expressways, significant investment in terms of the railway system and the metro system, which was already planned before we had submitted the bid. So amongst a number of other upgrades as well as in health and education, when we submitted the bid in 2009, we endeavored as a bid team to ensure that whatever requirements were there for the sake of the tournament were not imposed on the country. They were not excess requirements that would burden the country beyond 2022. So when we looked at, for example, the expressways, we worked very hard and diligently to ensure that the stadiums were located next to expressways that were already planned. The metro system itself, when we looked at it, we endeavored to ensure that the metro system was already going ahead or was planned, and then accordingly established the network and established the spread of the stadiums and the facilities around the metro system itself, including as well other facilities. So when we're talking about, for example, maybe getting into the bit of the minutiae detail, the International Broadcasting Center, ensuring that that facility was being provided within the country. There was a use within certain entities that would actually be using it, hospitals and schools and so on. So the plans effectively for the World Cup were, we endeavored to ensure that they were part of the overall country's DNA when it came to establishing the infrastructure and the networks. And accordingly, since then, of course, when we won the right to host the bid, to host the World Cup in 2010, we worked very diligently and we established the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, a very long name and a very grandiose name. Sometimes it sounds pompous, so I apologize for that. But it's effectively, the main purpose is to do the following. One, to ensure that we deliver the stadiums and we construct the stadiums required for the World Cup and according to FIFA standards. Two, ensure that we coordinate with our stakeholders, whether that includes, for example, who's responsible for the public roadways, the Qatar Rail, who's responsible for the railway, the airport, who's responsible for the airport expansions and so on and so forth, to ensure that they deliver the infrastructure required for the tournament while at the same time ensuring that the requirements actually go beyond 2022. That's the third part of our responsibility, which is effectively legacy, ensuring that there is a legacy beyond the World Cup. So when we're talking about, for example, the railway and ensuring that every single metro station, every single part of the network has a use beyond the World Cup, first and foremost, and then how does it serve the World Cup? And that is part of what we worked on very diligently and that's what we're continuing to do. Effectively, in terms of just moving towards more particular the topic that we're addressing today, the bulk of the investment, of course, comes from the government. That is what happened. The main reason it happened initially was, of course, for certain key purposes. We have successful PPP projects, mainly in the power and water sector. It has not moved on to other sectors quite as quick as we were actually planning. So accordingly, a significant portion of the infrastructure investments had come from the government. However, there is a move made by the government. Currently, there's a PPP law that's about to be promulgated right now and it's effectively creating the PPP structure and the framework to start encouraging the private sector in getting involved in infrastructure projects. Now, one such example which had come out was the economic zone or monotone, whereby it was actually passed on to the private sector to develop the infrastructure and start utilizing the land in a concession-based model. And that is, again, one model of where the country's moving overall. In terms of the World Cup, what we're doing, of course, a significant portion of the stadiums right now are being funded by the government. However, we do have one of our stadiums that we're trying to establish a PPP model or create it as a benchmark for developing stadiums in relation to PPPs. And that comes towards it's a primal state land located on the beach in Doha. And what we're doing is we're offering the land to investors to build a stadium and then after that to utilize the land for their purposes, whether it's a commercial real estate project, whether it's a different kind of project they have in mind, entertainment, hospitality, whatever it may be, that is up to the investors. And we're currently in discussions with a number of investors in relation to this model. Now, of course, it's not a traditional PPP model where the revenues are set, where the throughput is set, it's actually based upon market demand and creating the market demand. So it's, if you will, to a certain extent, a new, at least for us, it's a new benchmark in terms of establishing the stadium and developing a stadium in that manner of financing. We're very optimistic and so far the discussions with the investors have been very, very positive. And we're hoping that at least when it comes to this part of the stadium or this part of the legacy that we're trying to create is we create a legacy of how to actually finance stadiums, not utilizing government funds, but rather trying to get the private sector partnering in stadium developments. Thank you very much. Thank you and also congratulations. I understand that you delivered your first stadium yesterday. Yes, thank you very much. We launched, thank you all. It's actually an emotional moment for us. It's our first stadium, first milestone, first one at the gate, seven more to come, FIFA agrees to eight stadiums. And yes, it's utilizing the latest technology when it comes to cooling technology. And I welcome you all to join us at the end of the year. We're hosting the Gulf Cup, the GCC Cup, and we would love to host WEF there. So please, you're all welcome. If I could just move on to Dimitris Citratoulos. You are the VP for new business at the IFC and formerly you were the VP of Global Client Services, which meant that you were really trying to build strong relationships with the private sector. And before that, you were the director of MENA and Southern Europe. So you've been very familiar with, I think, this part of the world and many of the people in it. I think what we would like to know in this audience really is from the IFC's perspective, how do you see the role of the private sector funding and institutional funding evolving in terms of investment into infrastructure? And if you look at examples of countries that are doing it well and ones that are lagging, what are some of the lessons learned there? Thanks. Thanks for the invitation. Thanks for the introduction. I think Imad, in some ways, did a much better. I mean, I was supposed to sell Jordan, but he sold Jordan. He also sold the IFC and World Bank and the new strategy on infrastructure. So I think he did it all. So institutional investors. And what do we do about it? I think in many ways, when you look at this region, when you look at the world, the challenge of infrastructure are well known. The financing needs are well known. But I think it's what I see and what we see at the bank group is financing is not a real problem. Then you're putting together, and you heard it also from Imad as well, is putting together bankable projects is in many ways a challenge. And also building capacity at the government level to manage these projects is also important. Now, institutional investors, they've stayed out of this business. And I think worldwide, from what I remember in the statistics, about 2% of the money that is managed by insurance companies goes towards infrastructure. The bulk of it goes towards the developed markets. Very little goes towards emerging markets. I mean, if you take this region, a lot of the sovereign wealth funds are investing in infrastructure assets outside the region, and they don't invest in infrastructure assets within the region. So getting institutional investors into infrastructure is the next challenge for us. And it's actually the next opportunity. I think we've been working on a number of initiatives. And I think as there is, when you look at the world, and Kiri has done some of this work already, and I think he can also talk about that, because he did that in Turkey with a bond issue that we're all involved with. And he's done it in other places. He's developed the instruments and developed the development of local capital markets in countries around the world. It's very important, because if you do that, you'll have the ability to channel domestic savings into support of infrastructure projects. This is something that's not happening today. I think what you have is you talk about one country that's doing it, the one that comes to mind is Colombia. We're in Colombia with their program, for their 4G program for highways. They are going into, I'm talking about emerging markets now, they are going into the way of trying to attract institutional investors and use the capital markets to finance these projects. We just did one in Turkey with Kiri, but I think Turkey has tremendous potential in that space. We're working there to develop the capital markets. Here in this region, capital markets are not there yet. I mean, one of the things we've done is also on our own, we have a couple of initiatives. The one is, you know, we might talk about green bonds. I mean, green bonds is a new instrument. What we try to put together is with Amundi, which is the asset manager of the Crédit Agricole Group, is put together a $2 billion green bond fund to work around the world. But that, again, the success of that undertaking is, I think, we can raise the money. But the success is, can we build enough, can we develop enough green bonds around the world and build capacity in governments and corporates also to issue green bonds there? In the developed world, this has taken off and has taken off well, but in emerging markets, what you have is India and China are doing it. You have a little bit in Brazil, but not in the rest of the world. The other thing we've done is use, try to attract insurance companies into our loans. And one of the things we're doing is we have an initiative with four major, four of the leading insurance companies in the world where they're gonna be co-investing with us in infrastructure projects and with long maturities. This is the first time. To work with institutional investors, there's one other thing that I think is important is your insurance, institutional investors, I think about pension funds, I think about insurance companies. In some ways, also, the regulatory environment in the developed world plays a role because a lot of the asset managers today will tell you that regulatory environment, the current regulatory environment is not conducive for support of infrastructure projects. Banks, most banks today are out of the infrastructure finance business, I mean, the long-term infrastructure finance business, especially the international banks. Insurance companies also in Basel III, Basel IV, the Basel IV that's coming, makes this more difficult. Insurance companies also face challenges around solvency too, so this is something else that from a point of view of governments around the world and from the point of, say, the regulators and the global system, and it's one thing we have to address because we want to put institutional money into infrastructure, but we also need to put the regulatory framework in place that allows us to do so. Thank you. I'd now like to just turn to Cherry. You are really the person here from the private sector, you have been spending a lifetime in terms of trying to raise capital and deploy capital into infrastructure markets and had a long and successful career doing that. You've again seen countries and projects that have been successful and less successful, I believe you have about 50 billion dollars worth of projects for which you've been responsible. As you reflect back on what's worked and what hasn't worked, what makes you choose certain countries or certain projects that you work on and reject others, and what do you think differentiates success from failure? First, I think I'm speaking as a long-term owner of assets and also a developer, and so therefore, when we think about infrastructure investment gap, we're also thinking about greenfield and new infrastructure, as Dimitri was saying, a lot of the money on institutional capital is actually trying to just buy things that are already built, which is much easier than building them yourself. And in that context, to focus on your question, I think project and country that works are projects and countries where you have the opportunity to engage and cooperate and have a partnership with between public and private sector much earlier than people would imagine. And so it really can take a number of various forms. It could be project-specific, obviously, but it could also be on the regulatory side in how you can actually enable a market. What Minister Fukuri was talking about, actually when we're talking about green bond, is we're trying to launch an initiative and to engage with the regulator here to see how we can actually develop the capital market to be able to issue bonds, because as much as I would say the renewable energy initiative here has been quite successful, it built on experimentation and now it's getting more scale, but it needs to be even scaled up beyond what it is today. So how could we do that? There is an existing set of institutional investors that are Jordanians and that have actually long-term money and significant amount of it. And they should probably now focus on investing on things like the renewable program or the type of infrastructure rather than being in fixed income in the international market where you can probably only barely make 1%, if you're lucky, nowadays. And so it's really channeling back this money, but it's a conversation between regulators, government and private sector to create the instruments or the environment that will enable projects. So hopefully we'll be able to have this discussion and it will take time to really enable the issuance of green bonds that could be placed on a private placement basis to local institutional investors either to refinance projects that have been financed already and then free up a capacity or finance new projects to really help deploy that big strategy on renewable but overtype of infrastructure. The same apply to a project specific. When Dimitris was mentioning Turkey, we did spend quite a bit of time with the Turkish Ministry of Health to actually create the contract that would enable a bond issuance, first of all, a normal international financing and a green and social bond issuance to be able to finance a hospital in the eastern part of Turkey in El Aziz. So and all that was also possible because we had very good support from the DFIs and I think they can be great facilitators. But it's all about talking to each other and pursuing the same goal. And then there's really no over solution than that because it's complex. It's about putting very complicated things together. So the dialogue at the outset and very early in the process between government, private sector, DFIs as facilitators to actually slice and really see how the risk can be shared, de-risk such structures so you can bring in institutional money. So what has been done with a big number of DFIs involved, IFC, BRD, MIGA from the World Bank Group was really providing a liquidity facility and a wrap for this bond in El Aziz to allow it to actually be two notches ranked above sovereign risk, which actually makes it from a European regulator perspective quite acceptable for insurance companies to put it on their balance sheet. So I think it's also very much possible in a country like Jordan which is not far away from investment grade status that if you could de-link these projects with this type of product to be able to enhance them and make them more attractive to institutional investors you can actually create a whole new space in relation to financing these projects. So to me that's really the key, a constant dialogue but very early at the very early stage to prepare, structure, create projects. Can you talk a bit about the very early stages of projects which seem to be in many cases the most difficult part of it. Once you get to financial close you've got some clarity about what the project is but it can often take years if not decades of very early stage project development which costs a lot and it's tough to finance. So can you talk a bit about how big a challenge you see that being in the types of projects you're investing in and what is it that people are doing to be smart about addressing that? I think at the outset what you want to be investing in as a project when you sort of see a first piece of paper that talks about the project is having a public counterparty that has a strategy. And by having a strategy I mean a public counterparty that actually knows why they want the project and what will be the impact of the project on their own community. And if they can't answer those two questions it's probably not worth going further with the project because it will not get political support, it will not get community support. And on the long run for institutional investors like ourselves it's the major risk of political risk emerging further down the line. So that will be a first screening and that's really how you can start building robust project is when the public counterparty, when you're talking public infrastructure is very much engaged, they actually know what they want and they also engage on the community engagement side. So a number of people for example when they think about project development they complain a lot about the IFC standards. The IFC standards are not there to make people's life difficult. It's actually there to force you into this engagement, you know. How are you dealing with environmental issues? How are you dealing with social issues? Are you dealing with displacing people? What's the real impact of your project? And as superficial as they may look like to most contractors or industrial partners or developers is actually probably the key success factor for any single project especially in emerging economies where impact will be what will be seen at the end of the day and not necessarily additional capacity in infrastructure. So I would think that that early process of preparation by putting your finger on the most complicated issues is what allows you to shorten that development stage that in average is 18 months to two years if you do things properly. If you don't it's five years. And you can't just do technical development of a project and show up to DFI's or even investors and say, hey, I'm ready to finance. And they'll say, okay, why don't we do an ESIA and that's another year if your project is sufficiently complicated. So it's really about organizing yourself to tackle the big issues first rather than sort of pushing the ball in front of you and really eliminating this obstacle in a way that you can shorten that development period to two, three years and be able to achieve financial close. I wanted to add a couple of points here. I think is he has covered as well. I think it's, you know, all results are on project preparation, country strategy. Things also needs a decision on the part of the government and I think he might outline that well when you said about the CAPEX of next fiscal year for Jordan is you need a decision on, are you gonna go the private sector route or are you gonna go the public sector route? And this is fundamental because I think it takes a bit of, if there's gonna be a very different approach to project preparation, there's gonna be a very different decision-making process to be followed. And if governments have made this decision, they are committed to it, then the other parts can follow. And I think in parallel, the governments have to build capacity, I think, is this is very important because the governments need to be able to assess. And as Thierry said, there is an element of communication. You need to explain out there what it is that you're doing and why and what was gonna be the ultimate benefit benefit. One of the things that you said in your opening discussions was, which struck me was that the regulatory environment and the capital providing countries was becoming an increasing impediment. And I think if you look at the data, you certainly see the implications of that. You've seen that most of the international banks have pulled out of our part of the world. You certainly see that FDI has halved into Africa and the Middle East since the great recession, if you like. What do you think countries here need to do to respond to that? And what are the countries in this region doing that you're impressed by? And some of the ideas that you'd like to share with people here? You know, this is an interesting region because it's one thing to be in the region and another thing to be outside the region. And I think that this region has quite a lot of success stories. And if I go to answer your question quickly, in some ways you see is instead of having money leaving the region and going north, is how can you find a way to keep some of this money invested in the region? Because what you have is you need to increase, I say, the flows of funds within the region. I think this is what we see is the fundamental. The other thing is what you see in the region is, you know, it's not a very diverse region. It's not a region that is well integrated. There are good reasons for it. And perhaps maybe it's not suited for further integration. It's going to take a long time of that one. But there are ways where the private sector integrates the region. And the way I look at it is there are a number of companies in the region that are what we now see we call regional champions. They start in one country and then they establish a footprint across the minor region. These are, I would say, entities that need to be supported because these are entities that they do what others trying to do, but at the government level, they do it at the private sector level. And I think that is very important. And that is quite fundamental. And also what happens with a lot of these companies, I mean, they are global leaders and they are globally competitive, which again talks about this region, talks about the success of this region, the potential of this region. When I think, for example, and it's not necessarily infrastructure, but Jordan is a good case in point. I mean, Jordanian companies, a lot of them are very successful and they have a regional footprint. And they have a regional footprint because from the beginning they said, look, we're a small landlocked country. If we look at only Jordan, we're gonna stay small. But if we go beyond Jordan and we go around the region, we're gonna be a significant player. And there are companies from here that started in Jordan and then they have a global footprint and a strong regional footprint. Same thing is, if I look at the GCC today, the GCC is a place where there's a lot of activity. We talked yesterday about startups, but look at the basic industry and the bricks and mortars. You've got strong power companies from the region. You've got strong transport operators. You've got ports, airlines. These are companies that send a strong message about this region. And they are companies that play this role of channeling funds within the region. I think that's what I would say we need to see more of. Hassan, maybe I'm going to ask you a sort of a trickier question, but I think Dmitri, what you've been talking about and you started off by saying, you'd love to find ways of stopping the money from here flowing north and finding ways of investing it locally. I started also off by saying that everybody seems to be doing it. Well, one of the places that doesn't seem to be doing it at the moment is the Middle East. So we have an African Development Bank. We have an Asian Development Bank. We have the new Asian Infrastructure Bank. Every region seems to have its major development institution which is looking at how do you find ways of collecting capital and deploying it in the most productive way and providing a lot of technical advice in terms of doing that. That doesn't really seem to exist effectively in the Middle East. And I'm just wondering, from your perspective in Qatar with all the people whom you are dealing with, if you try to wear a Gulf GCC hat on, how is the Gulf thinking about its own backyard and what it needs to be doing to mobilize to deploy capital properly? Can I take Dmitri's question? Well, it is a tricky question. I mean, there's obviously initiatives that maybe people within the GCC governments or officials are better placed to respond in more technical detail than I am. What I can tell you is what we see on the ground, let's say from my side, from in relation to the World Cup and the slight involvement that I see. So there's significant cooperation, let's talk about in the terms of the GCC to start off with on a smaller scale. When we're talking about, for example, the energy network and the power lines, there is discussions going on right now in terms of integrating the power lines and significant discussions on going over there and investments going from one side to another from one country to another. Now, is it established on a unified platform like an African Development Bank or so on? That, as far as I'm aware, is still in discussion. It's still not coming along the way. What I can talk about in more detail is what we're trying to do with the World Cup. It's part of a vision that Qatar is trying to push and it's part of a vision that I believe also the Arab world and the Middle East is subscribed to, not only just the World Cup, but generally speaking. When we launched the bid to host the World Cup, our vision was it was not a Qatari World Cup, just like Jordan saw itself as being a landlocked nation that cannot be limited within its own borders. We saw that if the World Cup is limited to a 20 or a 30 day event limited to Qatari companies, it will end up becoming a failure. It will not have the success that we want because in the end, you need to access significant markets. You need to access wider markets throughout the GCC and the Middle East. And that's what we're trying to do, utilizing the World Cup under our own brand, if you will. So we've launched a number of initiatives, for example, not necessarily, and it's moving away from infrastructure, if you will, but I'm talking about trying to reach out to a Middle Eastern market, an Arab market on different initiatives, on different aspects. So when we're talking about today, for example, one element that we see is sports, the sporting industry. You look at Europe, you look at the US, it forms a significant portion of economic activity, whether it creates jobs, whether it creates opportunities for entrepreneurs, whether it's in terms of hospitality, and whether it's in terms of infrastructure development. It all creates an impetus. The Middle East is passionate about sport. We're absolutely crazy about it. You can go to any pub or any cafe or any shisha place and you will see people falling sports and yet the sport itself, the sporting industry, is relatively underdeveloped, whether we're talking about capabilities or even we're talking about infrastructure. Now what we're trying to do with the World Cup is develop capabilities of individuals within the sporting industry. We've launched an initiative called Gassour Institute, we're actually investing in people. It's open to everybody within the Arab world and the Middle East, and I specifically say the Arab world and the Middle East to include the entire geographical center in terms of investing in human capabilities. Now the idea behind it is we will be utilizing some of these individuals for the World Cup to actually deliver the World Cup with us, but more importantly also it's not just limited to those people that will deliver the World Cup but actually expanding it as much as possible to get them to contribute to a sporting industry. The ultimate vision or the ultimate hope and dream, and yes it is a hope and dream, is that it creates at the very least an unofficial wide and deep network of individuals that work together to somehow create a form of integrated sporting industry and sporting community that in itself actually kick starts other elements. Now when we're talking about, and that's in terms of the human capability, when we're talking about developing infrastructure, we're looking towards companies in particular from the Middle East and the Arab world to contribute with us and to work with us in delivering the infrastructure which in itself creates capabilities, creates experiences that can actually contribute to developing infrastructure within their own countries and expanding that and exporting that. We're also, we've launched and addressing the startup issue, we've launched an initiative called Challenge 22 which invests in startups. What we do is we launch a competition every year, we're in our second edition right now throughout the Arab world. We attract any startup, any entrepreneur to come to us and submit their ideas to us with the idea that the winners will have the World Cup as the ultimate platform within the Middle East, the ultimate global platform within the Middle East to utilize their products and effectively to be a launchpad for their initiatives, for their startups for the future. What we're trying to do now in the coming editions is also bring together venture capitalists and investors to bring them together and I know that there's a lot of other initiatives that are ongoing in terms of startups but I believe that with the hook of the World Cup, the one global platform, the one element, the one client, if you will, that can potentially launch you into, if not a global, a global company at least in terms of a regional company and we mean a regional company that goes beyond the borders of the Middle East or specific countries in the Middle East is a great opportunity and that's what we're trying to integrate. So while it doesn't come, while my answer does not reflect a PPP model per se, while my answer does not reflect in particular specific investments in infrastructure, it's still an attempt at actually trying to, if you will, create, to a certain extent, as I said, a network of opportunities and network of investments and network of individuals throughout the Arab world and the Middle East with this one event. Now, there's obviously another big major event that is out there that can actually play the same role and is working on playing the same role which is Dubai Expo 2020 and it is my belief that major events such as these are great opportunities to start the ball rolling towards leading to where the gentleman had been talking to on a much larger scale. While every initiative that has been mentioned is great, but my only concern with all, with trying to reform legislation and trying to create all that reform, at times it takes time, at times it takes quite a bit of time and while we need to achieve that as we work towards it, whatever other initiative that starts chipping away at these walls, I think is a great opportunity and that's what we believe in when it comes to the World Cup. Thank you very much. One of my duties is to make sure that we finished on time as well. I think we have two or three minutes left, which I think is enough time for one or two questions from the audience. So if we can bring the microphone to the front here, if you can quickly introduce yourself and let us know who you'd like to ask the question to. My name is Niraj and I work for Crescent Group. We are a 40-year-old project developer in infrastructure and oil and gas reports in the business. So first I'd like to compliment Dimitri. He's been a partner for 20 years and we've done many difficult projects together, including building a port in Iraq at a time when people thought we were crazy to look for financing. So that was such, it's an example of things we could do together. The more important thing I wanted to share is all is not doing glue and the reason it is not is because the budget deficits and declining oil prices have actually forced the GCC governments to look at capital markets in the source of money. And if you just track what's happened in 2017, around $9 billion has been funded in this bank funding and about $40 billion has been funded in capital market instruments. If you look at that figure two years back, it was the other way around. But what that has done is it has actually educated the global markets of the Middle Eastern risk and it's created a class of investors who are willing to bet on the Middle East. The last aquapower deal that just got done, it was a 22-year instrument and 55% of the investors came from the US and 20% came from the Far East. So in a way it's a sort of an investor-relation education that has never been done before in the history of the Middle East, that's been done now. You look at Greenpawn, $205 billion worth of Greenpawns have been issued today. And with Saudi announcing what they have done so far, you know, 10 sort of 1,000 megawatt of the next, it's a great time to be issuing these instruments and both governments to getting out of funding and actually standing behind the paper as opposed to deploying cash which will actually enable private sector to come. So my question back to you, Teri and you, Dimitri, is do you sort of share that view that there is now a case of more international money available on a longer-term basis for the region than relying on bilateral relationships as a way of funding between IFIs and private sector here? I guess my answer is not gonna be simple. It's gonna be yes and no. There is one positive development that has happened in Solvency 2 last year is that infrastructure in particular has been recognized as a specific asset class giving more leeway for investors to put it on their balance sheet without having the capital charge that private equity or over risky assets have. So, but that works. There's still one impediment which is investment grade and OECD classification. And I think that that is the next frontier in terms of being able to enable more deployment of institutional investor from the US or the Americas or Europe into this region. I think there's one positive things about this region is that it's not far away from, when you look at Turkey, it is OECD. It used to be investment grade. It's not, but it's close. And a number of countries here are actually close to. So, to me, one of the solution, and that's why I'm a believer in the possibility of deploying more bonds, is that if we can find enhancement solution to sort of bridge that small rating gap, then we will have a lot of money coming because clearly it's not a huge gap in terms of risk and profile, but it's a question of educating investors. And it's a question of people like Dimitri actually bridging that gap being facilitators and actually mobilizing less of their balance sheet than lending directly and helping develop that market. So there's a lot of work to be done there, but to me, it's quite possible in the next five years. Thank you very much for that. I think that our timing is up. But what I'd like to do is thank you, Thierry, Dimitri, and Hassan for being with us today. It's been a very interesting conversation. Thank you.