 Excellencies, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this afternoon session, Partnerships for Economies in Transition. We have a very distinguished panel that will enlighten us on what it takes to revive economic growth and secure political stability in the countries in transition in this region. To my left, I have the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of Egypt, Amar Daragh. I have then Professor Yusef Stiglitz, also a Nobel Laureate. I think Professor Stiglitz is well known for all of us. Then we have the Minister from Tunisia of Finance, the Minister of Finance, LES Fakafak. Then we have also the Executive Vice President of the World Bank, but even more important, CEO of the International Financial Cooperation, IFC, Mr. Yin Yong Chai. Then we have Mr. Samar Kure, the President of CCC. And also a Co-Chair as also like Mr. Chai of the Summit here. Mr. Kure also being a very big investor in the region when it comes to infrastructure. And then we have Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Kuwait, Mustafa Jassim al-Shamali. So I think we will give the panel a big hand at the start and welcome. We know that the region has been through a big transition the last years. We also know that the region is facing, unfortunately, a slowing economic growth, removing from around 4.8% in 2012 to more close to 3% in 2013. And we know this is happening at the backdrop of political challenges, social unrest, and also the necessity to revive economic growth to create all the jobs that are needed for the youngest generation, the youngest population in the world together with Africa. 70 million jobs have to be created in the coming decade. And we know that more than 50% of the population in this region is under 27. I think it will be a good thing to start with the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of Egypt. Minister, it's about a year since you had your presidential elections. We know that Egypt are facing a lot of challenges, but there are also opportunities. I think all the participants would like to know what is your game plan, your strategy for securing investments and reviving growth in your country. That's a simple question. Thank you very much. We as a government, I just joined the government a couple of weeks ago, but I can now enjoy speaking on behalf of the government. We as government are facing two main problems. The first one is that we are trying to fix and handle problems related to the current transition period. And at the same time, we are trying to fix the problems that were dominating our countries for tens of years before the transition. And this is the first phase, if you will, of the problems. The second phase is that everybody in the world within our country and outside would like to see us handle all this and solve all the problems now. Everything has to be done now. If yesterday, that's better. Tomorrow, maybe it's okay, but not later than that. And this is causing a huge pressure. Nevertheless, responsible governments have to have, as you said, have to have plans to tackle these problems. And at the same time, we expect the support of our fellow citizens inside, as well as the international community to be able to handle this huge mission, this huge task, and to permit us to sail safely through this transitional period. In Egypt, the government actually has been working on an extensive program of reform, or if you will, economic lift-off, that has been subject to extensive domestic dialogue to come up with a definition of what needs to be done. Our program is actually based on seven main pillars. The first one is to take care of the, on the short-term and medium-term of the fiscal problems. Number two, to handle corruption, to take care of corruption and get rid of it, or at least minimize it. Number three, when we do this, we have to not to forget the dimension of social justice that was actually the main driver behind the change that took place. We also need to encourage investment and create jobs. Number five, we will focus, we are focusing on industrial development. We are focusing on energy sector and mining sector. Number seven, we are focusing on the tourism sector. These are the seven main pillars that we intend to apply and lead over the coming few years in order to achieve our reform. When we talk about international support to our program, we expect that support to be compatible with our requirements and our necessities. Sometimes when we deal with international funding agencies and organizations, we get a feeling that the support is really for, not really following our priorities. Maybe other priorities, sometimes the priorities are compatible, but sometimes they are not, or they are not well-defined. For example, a project was proposed for creating an IT environment to handle the health insurance issue. But we have to take into account that we do not have health insurance in the first place. So it doesn't really make sense to spend on an IT platform, while we still do not have the basics to have a basic system for health insurance. Things like that. The other important thing is, and which I do realize now, only after two weeks of joining the government, is that probably the most important KPI for the international support is whether the money is being spent or not. Is the money utilized or not? But are we achieving the objectives for which the money was allocated? I know that this is the job of the government to make sure that it's happening, but we do expect also support of the international organizations to help us more, define in a better way, and also follow up on the implementation of the support and to make sure that it is really achieving what it is intended for. There are so many details, of course, but as the discussion goes. Thank you very much for sharing that reform agenda with us, Minister, and thank you for being here also the second week on the job. That's very impressive and very appreciated. Professor Stiglitz, you've written a lot about this region in general, but also listening now to the reform agenda of the new government in Egypt. Will we see revived economic growth in the coming years in this region, and then what does it take from your viewpoint? I think you highlighted some of the challenges that the region is going through a transition, particular countries like Egypt are going through a transition, a time where the global economy is experiencing a slowdown, and not just a global economy, but since the trade connections with Europe are particularly strong, and Europe is in recession, and not likely, I don't want to be, this is not a conference about Europe, but one can say a lot about how flawed economic policies and structures there are likely to lead them to have a long period of slow growth, volatility. It really does present a real challenge for the region. Let me try to make just a couple of comments about some of the things that I think would help them address these challenges, and I think the minister's list includes many of the things that I would have put on. I think it is a good list. A couple of other things that I would want to maybe add. One of them is the importance of having a more inclusive political process, a political process in which there's a lot of consensus. I think at least as we read about it from the outside, there still is a lot of division. I realize for an American to be talking about political consensus may seem a little strange, and so I don't want to say follow our lead. I say don't follow our lead on this, but I think the point is that particularly given the other problems, the lack of political inclusivity consensus makes for an added dose of uncertainty which will make investment more difficult, and therefore I think it provides a further impetus beyond all the others for trying to reach a broader consensus across the political spectrum. The second thing I think is that all countries going through a transition have a problem of what we sometimes call transitional justice. How do you deal with the problems of the past? One aspect of that I just mentioned is really that focus needs to be going forward into the future and not just dealing with one can't ignore the past, but I think there needs to be a focus, for instance, on creating new enterprises as well as just privatizing old state enterprises to try to create an environment where new enterprises can be created. One aspect of that was touched on in a way this morning when they talked about the problems posed by budgetary on the budget caused by subsidies, like energy subsidies, but these also distorted prices also represent a problem for investment. Investment because today the prices are distorted, but even if they're profitable today there's an uncertainty about the elimination of those subsidies so that dealing with the subsidies becomes an important part of the strategy. And finally let me just say a word about the role of international cooperation in this area which I think can be very important. This region, like some other developing regions, is there are very big needs for infrastructure and I think satisfying, addressing those needs would itself have a very, would not only create jobs now but would also be a complement to private investment. They would make private investment more attractive. What's striking about the region is on the one hand there's obviously a lot of money in the region. There are a lot of needs in the region and the question is how do you bring the two together and here I think there's perhaps a need for some new institutions or expanding existing institutions. So at the international level we're a little bit in the same way. If we look around the world we have underutilized resources. We have vast amounts of liquid capital and reserves, 3.3 trillion in China and we have huge unmet needs infrastructure all over Africa and so we have this incongruity. Markets are supposed to bring resources to where they're needed and right now that's not happening and that's why I think there is a need for for instance in the region something perhaps like an Arab development bank. The BRICS are getting together to form a new BRICS bank based on the notions of new mandates taking advantage of the new instruments, new governance. I think something like that might be very useful in this region as a catalyst and a facilitator for the investments that would I think address some of the long-standing problems in the region. Thank you so much, Professor Stiglitz. I think there are many points that we will follow up also in this discussion. I just wanted to come shortly back to you, Mr. Daragon, two points that Professor Stiglitz mentioned. One was his first point related to more inclusive political process. That the political situation has added a dose of uncertainty. How are you dealing with this moving forward? And the second question is this about energy subsidies. This is sometimes a big elephant in the room. We heard earlier on that on average 10% of all the budgets in this region are used on energy subsidies and there could be alternative allocations for these money. If you could share a little bit of your thinking around that with us. Okay, very briefly about political inclusiveness and there is a lot of debate about this point. And the point I always raise is what is inclusiveness? Is it like you have a national unity government, for example? As you said, do you expect to have a government composed of both the Democratic and the Republican Party to handle a difficult economic situation, for example? Not very likely, I think. Or inclusiveness means that everybody is allowed to express his opinion and through democratic institutions in a way that will lead to better decisions. And when it comes to Egypt, I believe that we are doing pretty well in this, or we are heading to be doing pretty well. Maybe we are not fully successful yet, but I believe the benchmark would be to establish the second chamber of the parliament, the House of Representatives, where you have a clearly defined majority and you have opposition. And this is inclusiveness. And it is very important to realize that it is extremely difficult or almost impossible to have agreement on all issues. So the question is how to manage the disagreements. And this is the only way to do this successfully is through democratic institutions. We have our constitution now. We have an elected president. We have the upper chamber of the parliament and we are about to have the second one. And then I would say that we have a very good degree of inclusiveness to achieve better governance. When it comes to the issue of, I would just also like to refer to the issue of the transition and justice. And we are starting right now, maybe if you are following the news, we are starting right now a big campaign of reconciliation with major enterprises that have been having problems with the regime or related to court verdicts. And we are forming right now committees in order to settle these disputes. And in the coming few weeks, you will hear a lot of good news in this regard. So this is part of the look to the future rather than looking to the past. When it comes to the issue of the subsidies, this is one of the major issues actually that is hindering our progress or has been hindering our progress. We are in the middle of all this chaos, dealing with the previous shortcomings and dealing with the transition. We are also tackling problems that have been there for a long time, including the issue of the subsidies. I believe what we are aspiring to do is to make a balance between maintaining the dimension of the social justice and reforming the structure of the subsidies. And the way to do this is to, for example, if you take the electricity sector, rather than subsidizing the fuel that is used to produce electricity so that everybody is subsidized, so the subsidies do not necessarily go to those who really need it. You can liberate the cost of the fuel and then you get the final electricity product. And then the government can decide who to subsidize. And this way the subsidies would go to those who need it. And we are applying the same thing also for the production of bread, for example, which is very important for Egypt. So we are really starting to tackle this problem. I believe courageously it is difficult because people have had it. I mean, they don't want to suffer any longer, but we are trying our best to tackle this problem and get rid of it once and for all within a few years from now. Thank you. You want to do a short reply? I just want to remark about the political inclusiveness. Democratic processes are obviously an important part of this process, but there's more to it than that. The question is, even if you have a majority, the question is the extent to which you include perspectives of the minority and reach a consensus. You might have an ability to, we would call it a win or take all, to say, do whatever we want. We have the majority. On the other hand, at some point later, you might be the minority, and democratic processes try to, or I think if you're going to have political stability, one has to incorporate a wide spectrum of views within the policies, even if you are a majority. I think we will then move over to Mr. Jing Yong Chai being the head of IFC, the real vehicle for enhancing private-public partnership at the bank. Looking at the region, listening to the discussion here, and also the minister's comment on some of the prerequisite that sometimes are there for investments that not necessarily all the governments are amused about. What role do you see for your organization and also for public-private partnerships in general in this region, and how to make this successful? One thing is to invest, but is also seeing a yield, seeing growth coming out in the other end. Thank you. I think the ultimate success for this region to come out from the current challenging situations can be work together between the public and private sector to unleash the energy of entrepreneurship of the private sector to create the jobs needed and to develop the economy. That's really the ultimate test. So far, I have to say they are a pocket of success, but certainly it's not satisfactory. So what is the key? The key is to build trust between the public and private sector. And I just heard the minister you said we need to look at the past. I think it's legitimate, but I think more of the energy and the professor Stig has also said should be really used for the future. And we can learn from the past, but the most important thing is what can we learn from the past and with the help of the international community that build the trust. Both sides can play a critical role. From the public sector, I think it's clearly very important to build the confidence by making critical decisions. Frankly, there are quite a few countries because of the past, there are a lot of decisions needed for investment has not been made. And there should be much more transparency and there should be much clear rule of regulation. These are the areas that from the government side can certainly do and in that regard, between the World Bank Group, between the Bank and IFC, we are actively involved in dialogue. From the private sector, it's also very important to learn the lessons from the past. First, you should know, I mean the private sector should know it's role in the economy, should view the public sector, should view the government as a partner, should engage with the government on conversations on what is needed. Another thing is very important to make sure the private sector's growth is really inclusive to benefits, not just a few, benefits the majority of the people. And by doing that, I think you can start to build confidence and putting money into those countries. Particularly, I have awards for the local private investors. You need to lead. IFC is there. The World Bank is there to work with you. If the local capital, local investors start to move, I think that will build a lot of confidence for international investors. And from my point of view, working with our team, we have been actively engaged in this regard. Frankly, the needs of capital in this region is so huge. Whatever IFC can do is truly a drop in a big ocean. But, instead of that, over this year alone, we have put in $2.3 billion investing in the region. And we are confident we are committed to the long-term future of this region. We all talk about the long-term potential. We think of this region as urbanized, has educated the youth, and actually has a lot of capital. The challenge is how can we build this confidence to start to move the machine, let the capital to be deployed in the areas where it's needed the most. We identified, I've seen some time we're a little bit clinical. We look at what are the impediments for job creation. There are several areas. One is what we call the doing business environment. How we can work with the government and assist the government to improve the environment. There are three, six things. Doing business kind of how easy it's going to be, how many debt you need to get a registration. And the second area is really critical is accessible finance. And this region, in spite of the huge amount of capital, is the least intermediated in terms of helping these small and medium enterprises. And we have been using a variety of tools to intervene. We invest in many banks. This year we invest, $400 million as equity. In some of the local banks, we feel the same value with us to really try to do small and medium enterprises investment. We also recently, yesterday, actually, signed a very interesting facility, long-term loan facility together with our partner from EIB and also other development agencies. More than $400 million. It's not just the amount of money. This is the risk-sharing facility. Basically, if a partner bank, local bank willing to lend to small and medium enterprises will be encouraging to do it and if there's a loss, we will take the first loss. To provide that kind of cushion is very innovative. Meanwhile, the World Bank and our NFC team are also providing assistance to the banks and also entrepreneurs to learn how to do SME financing, how to evaluate the credits. The third area has touched upon very important, is huge for infrastructure. Sometimes, in this region, the job creation is easier to say than hard to do. If you have very high electricity price, even though there are lots of subsidies, it's for residential, for industry not necessarily cheap. So, huge need, we estimate about $100 billion a year needed between now 2020 for this region to invest in infrastructure. Certainly, the last area is skill training. So, in each of the four areas to answer your question, we have targeted program engagement and we hope through our intervention, either directly or through demonstration impact, we can mobilize the banks, the investors and the government to build a trust and to really start to get things going. I think it's critical we need to put action into the process. Thank you. Mr. Kuri, you're one of the investors in this region and also been building a lot of infrastructure. Also here in Jordan listening to what IFC was saying, no, I guess it's beautiful music in your areas, but also knowing from you a little bit more, what does it take for you to even step up and do more infrastructure investments in this region to then unlock some of the cost that we see also related to lack of infrastructure today that makes this region less competitive than necessary. What are the preconditions for you to be even more active in the region? I would like to start with the recent World Economic Arab competitive report. It said that the three main impedances in the Arab world, one is weak infrastructure, that's the main one. Second one is innovation and the third one is the insufficiency of labor frequency. So I'm going to focus the importance of the infrastructure. As you correctly said, they forecast we need at least 100 billion dollars in the years to come and not single Arab country has that funds available and I'm going to try to tackle the first what I think the government needs to do is to have one multilateral to do and at the end what the private sector needs to do. So we'll start with the government. Of course, the government first transparency allowing a private public partnership with the trust looking at the long-term interest they have to revisit their judicial system because for investors to come and invest in a certain country we have to make sure the laws we have to look again at the operation and maintenance many times we look at jobs we build them and then we let who will run the projects. Basically operation and maintenance is a very important part of the infrastructure that we have seen it has been neglected. Now turning to the multi national institution like IMF World Bank Arab funds basically of course they have to for us as private sector to invest in these projects we need the political risk guarantee we need to make sure that in this transitional stage of some of the Arab countries we need to have some political insurance covered. We need to have the access to financing as you correctly said the Arab region is rich with capital but that capital is not deployed and it is worried to deploy and the only way for us to bridge that cap is to have a multi national institution like World Bank bridge that cap. Lastly I'll talk about the private sector I think the best thing we can do as you correctly said we have to lead we have to put our own funds number two we have to look at the labour skill there is a mismatch in the labour skill between the available resources in the Arab world and what is really needed in the market and I think we have to have a closer ties with both the universities and the international training schools and I think we have the expertise to do that and lastly I have to say it is part of our corporate social responsibility each we are all multi rational firms operating in this region we have to pay a little bit back to the communities we operate in thank you we got a good response to that Mr. Deputy Prime Minister Shamali Professor Stiglis was saying that there are a lot of needs in this part of the world for investments but there are also the funds are there if there is a willingness looking at the challenges that we see in quite a divided Arab world with the challenges that the North African countries are facing then compared to the GCC countries seeing it from Kuwait with the solid sovereign wealth fund but also solid fiscal situation what role do you see for GCCs being a partner in this transition what are the preconditions for being willing to step up because these are also funds that belong to your people thank you very much for this and for my contribution I prepare to say it in Arabic as you are webcasting live so I think in Kuwait and Arabic I'll translate what I have in mind to reply on this first of all my contribution will come into three points first one is what we have of planning in Kuwait and second where the role of Kuwait fund and the third is KIA role Kuwait Investment Authority role in the Arab world and so very delicate I think you have your head set because I'm going to say it in Arabic I'm already ready we have started yes we have started we have started the five-year national development plan till 2014 the cost of this plan is 150 billion US dollars this is one of a series of plans that are going to be implemented in future it is true that during the first stage the cost was 980 projects that were included in the previous plans or in the budgets of other institutions however the new projects are 270 projects that will include other countries as well the five year plan includes the following aspects number one to push forward the economic growth by the end of the plan number two to support the private sector and as I said before the private sector is one of the most important aspects of our society and to increase the contribution of the private sector by doing this we are pushing forward the private sector in order to assume its role we are trying to diversify the financial base in order to achieve the economic growth rate of 7% to diversify the production base the commercial sector and to increase the non-oil activities we have another sector which is really very important and as I said before it is the oil sector in Kuwait we are planning to improve the oil fields in order to have better improvement and better productivity we are trying to increase the social and economic development in Kuwait in fact these are the main aspects of our development plan for the MENA region we believe that such countries have a lot of potentials that can absorb so many new projects so that's why we are planning to have more job opportunities in these countries given the potentials that they own we believe that this region needs economic reform support of their governments they need good governance and they need good management as well as managerial skills in order to the potentials that they have we also believe that the MENA region has achieved the growth rate till 2008 which is 5% or 5.2% and if we compare it between the growth rate in the OECD countries we will find that it is 2.4% this means that this region has a lot of prospects in future however I would like to review with you the development fund in Kuwait as well as its achievements in collaboration with other countries in the MENA region or abroad number one the contribution of the Kuwait fund to the MENA region has reached 9.8 billion US dollars in 16 countries of the MENA region this includes 320 projects in the following sectors number one agriculture, transportation communication, energy industry water and sanitation as well as other social projects and the contribution of development banks in these countries and now allow me to review some of the projects that were implemented in a number of Arab countries and as I said before we have contributed to a number of projects in these countries in fact I am trying to skip some of the main points because I don't want to take much of your time I would like here to speak about the investment authority in Kuwait and I am the board chairman of the investment authority in Kuwait reviewing the activities of this authority shows that this region is one of the most important regions in attracting foreign investment we also believe that we can achieve more economic growth rates in this region given the potentials that they have starting from the late 2007 and early 2008 the investment authority in Kuwait has changed its own strategy for the Middle East and many other regions in fact this authority is trying to diversify its activities the investments before focused on Asia such as Japan and other countries in Asia however this region in particular is being given more focus and importance in particular needs more investment in order to develop however we would like to say that there is one point that should be taken into consideration which is this investment should be welcomed in these countries and it should be given the opportunities that it deserves we have 28.3 billion dollars as investment by this authority in 16 countries there is a number of activities such as deposits equities real estate funds and loans the total amount is 47 billion dollars in all these activities that are being financed and funded by the investment authorities in conclusion we do believe that this region has the greatest economic growth potentials this region can become a new window or a new Asian power however these countries need to change how to deal with investments in fact we don't want these countries just to wait for the support and the assistance and in fact we have listened before in so many fora that this country needs partnership between the private and public sectors in order to play a vital role in attracting economic growth and in achieving economic sustainability I'm not here talking about Kuwait but I'm talking about Kuwait and the GCC countries in general we would like to be given justification in order to continue our investments in fact we are asking whether this contribution is given as an assistance or it will bring back return on us you cannot just take a part of your assets and give it as an assistance unless there is a return on your investments so this is really a very important point in order to be sustainable in our assistance thank you very much I think it's very natural to go then from Kuwait to the Minister of Finance of Tunisia listening to the Deputy Prime Minister of Kuwait saying that there has to be a willingness to reform it has to also accept a return on invested capital it also has to be welcomed then there are great opportunities for this region it can even in the future become the new Asia if one gets and introduce the right policies is Tunisia do Tunisia have the conditions to receive more investment from the GCC region? hope so in fact we are the transition period is very complicated to manage we are dealing with big paradox between give a very quick answer for social demand for create immediate job reduce the disparity between region and this is what people are waiting for immediately and this can be possible only when the state play big role and when we expand more and this create a deficit and this create a lack and this create a challenge for the future and this also push the government to start immediately the big reform to solve the the structural week before the revolution but also the problem created after the revolution and this is the second paradox if the government of transition for one year or one year and half are able to make such big reforms to make alone such big reform and to choose alone the new economic model and in our case for example in Tunisia but I think it's the same thing for all the country in transition we are in coalition between three party and they not share exactly the same economic model for the future and this is this became more complicated and this is why I emphasize what are the three two party social democrat and one party liberal and conservative party so all together have to first deal with this this quick answer to solve and to have more stability to expand more and this to destroy the public financial indicator for deficit and in the same time start the reform and convince the financial institution convince all the country who needs to help this transition and who want to invest so this is only to say how much is complicated to manage a transition and even if from we can imagine that it is similar thing to manage a transition after revolution in Eastern Europe 20 years ago or even now in spring Arabic and it is very different from country to country but in any case we return back for the fundamental and I want to emphasize in what Mr. Stiglitz said that the inclusivity is the main consensus and inclusivity is let's see the magic terms we use and we try to use Indonesia even to found the consensus for the political issues but also and more important for the economic reforms we need to implement and we start we took the decision to start the main important reforms in the banking system in the fiscality in the investment code in the modernization of the administration these are the main four pillar of our program of reforms you know Tunisia before the revolution was seated many times as a good student and with the very good indicators growth average of 5% deficit low than 3% 2.5% also the inflation quite good investment private investment around 20 22% of the GDP was the global investment and 2 3rd was private but this is this all this good indicator was not in phase with the aspiration of people and with the dignity of people and we have a huge disparity between regions and we irritate also big in employment trade mainly for young people which is 30% and this is why it is necessary to rethink and to rethink completely the model of economy and we focus all in the private investment how we are able to be more attractive based in our own assets in the good level of of education in the strong administration little bit bureaucratic administration which need to be more modernized but we have strong administration and we have to be more attractive for investor and all this is today the main important question we want to deal with is how to reach a level of investment more than 26 to 27% from the GDP how the foreign direct investment goes from 3.5 all last decade 10 years ago to at least 7 or 8 and these are the main strong objective we want to reach and for this we are working in the reform I said before we start the reform to access for finance to diversify the finance sector to consolidate the banking system push more people to go for the stock exchange market and enterprise to simplify a lot the investment the administration procedure which are very complicated for investors and this are our priority today thank you in the meantime we have 4 or 5 access for our economy which we want to consolidate and to improve mainly for the industry and we are one of the big side for automotive and airplane component industry and we are working to develop and to be more attractive for this investment and for agriculture and tourism these are the main important sector we are looking to increase investment unfortunately the situation in Europe is not so good to help the transition nevertheless we are convinced in working with our neighbor and working as a door for the Africa and consolidate our partnership with Europe we will succeed thank you now the world is changing very fastly at the world economic forums some 2 weeks ago in Cape Town it was clear that the 7 out of the 10 fastest growing economists know in the world is African economists who would have taught that 10 years ago so this also shows that there are great opportunities for this region I want to come back to this idea of professor Stiglitz about Arab development bank but before doing so just very shortly to you Mr. Darag as a response to the deputy prime minister of Kuwait the prime minister was indicating willingness to also invest and support what is your short comment to the minister's intervention of course we would very much welcome this move and we are really looking forward to having before turning to outside the region to have our financing needs satisfied from within the region and traditionally our relationship with the GCC countries have been very good and we are really looking forward to enhance this relationship and build on it we do believe that when it comes to Egypt the relationship with the Gulf is strategic and we can cooperate in a very good way to maintain the national interests of both Egypt and the GCC countries so we welcome this very much but I would like to add something that is related to the issue of inclusiveness because I was this comment is coming after I listened to the talk of my Tunisian colleague his excellency I remember in 2010 we everybody was talking about how good the Egyptian and the Tunisian economies are doing and this is a great example for emerging countries and things like that and never the last few months we just had two great revolutions so one would think that is it really related to the main KPIs of the macroeconomy the growth percentage and the reserves and things of course these but I believe that what we in both countries and many other similar countries we were lacking is the dimension of social justice in other words inclusiveness but this time it is not political inclusiveness it is economic inclusiveness as a matter of fact this is much more important for the peoples to be economically inclusive included in the economy of their own countries and if you go normally the media talks more about political issues and about disputes and differences in a way that makes you believe that this is everything and if you solve these problems that's it but if you talk to most of the people they don't give let's check with one of the leading economists in the world Professor Stiglitz on this economic models where the economic models not totally reflecting the full picture or flawed in that sense do we have to look into some new models also that are better incorporating social inclusiveness I agree very much with the minister I think it is very important one of the things that had happened in Egypt before the transition was they had growth statistics that were not terrible in many ways they looked very good but the benefits of that growth were not widely shared in fact they were not shared at all by large groups of the population so I think that what we've learned is that there are several models that have failed you might say the communist model or the Arab socialist model that didn't work that didn't work because it didn't have any growth or very little growth the neoliberal model also didn't work it produced in some cases growth but it was not shared prosperity it wasn't shared growth and it went to a very small fraction just like in the United States actually the vast majority of people in the United States have not done very well in the last 15 years one of the things that most people don't understand median income for a full time male worker in the United States are lower than they were 40 years ago so for large fractions of the population the economic machine has not been delivering so the question is where can you find a model that has worked actually I think the one area set of countries that has done reasonably well are the Scandinavian countries not just Norway which had a lot of oil to help but that's an example of a country with oil that has used it very well but the other countries don't have those kinds of resources and I think have done very well I think that version of a European social model is actually one that I think the countries of the region ought to look at without the currency union that caused such a problem in Europe you know when I was student in economics I had a professor called Asard Lindbeck teaching and another quite famous economist he said that you know in the room with there probably will be around 7 to 8 different opinions but I think based on what professor Stiglitz said I think also Jin Yong Chai you have also background from the private sector Goldman Sachs before you joined the IFC listening to this discussion about inclusive growth and also employment this notion of jobless growth and all this who are those elements also included in your policies when you decide for investments or you don't agree with that angle at all I absolutely agree we need both and if we do not do well on one side the other side is not sustainable and so that is very much not only kind of theoretically has been proven again and again so from our intervention we are very much focused on both and we have most of our investment and service very much focused on what we call the bottom of the pyramid and we are very big in SME financing and we are very we just had a PE conference and I'm new to IFC they had this global emerging market PE conference more than 800 people showed up and I didn't realize IFC represent 10% of the private equity emerging markets and listening to the audience I just want to say people learn even you would argue private equity guys only focus on return actually not necessarily true they are talking about sustainability they are talking about stability because investment in an unstable environment is the biggest risk so from our angle it's not again not only IFC the World Bank our own balance sheets it's really our ability to influence the thoughts of the partners from the investment world and also from the real sector you know I had a very interesting conversation with one of the global leading providers of infrastructure we were talking over dinner during spring meetings talking about what has changed post-Arab spring he was saying you guys IE World Bank and IFC you got to think outside the box we have a different view about risk if we cannot help the economy to develop we don't have a future market so we are trying to stretch our imagination change the concept of risk so what I want to say again I emphasize early our role both IFC and the World Bank but more importantly between the government and the private sector there is a true partnership and I think in this region is more than ever critically needed you know we were just talking because certainly depending on the countries in certain part of certain countries in this region government job is the first job also the last job is the only job people want we have to change that clearly the public sector cannot create all those jobs we have to unleash the entrepreneurship the energy of the youth we need to play together thank you I just wanted to when we are coming close to the end here come back to this more innovative idea of a bank we have a separate development bank for Asia we have it for Latin America and Africa what do you think about this idea of an Arab development bank do you think there will be also interest from the GCC to contribute and also is there a missing link here especially if we want to mention here you can also in the future see the Arab world becoming a growth area like Asia I'm sure some of you were yesterday there is an initiative also the world it's called the Arab stabilization plan and this is basically something similar in my view it doesn't have to be an independent we can for example we have the Arab fund we have in parallel to the Kuwait fund we have the Arab fund that can be developed specifically into the idea is as my deputy minister just said these countries allow opportunities for investment and for good return so we have to mobilize the Arab capital available but make sure the transparency, the return and the mechanism is there one idea is of course the Arab stabilization plan or the as Mr. Dabdoub said this morning the Marsha plan but I think it is needed now how we go about doing it that's the problem Mr. Daragh would you like Arab development bank? I don't know whether it will help to add another another organization that is working on providing finance because there are several other development banks and organizations that through which some Arab funding can be channeled through I mean like the Arab fund the Islamic bank and other organizations the thing is to have a real conviction that it is to the benefit of the wealthy country that the development of the area is really beneficial for the whole area it is not just for the benefit of the less fortunate countries and if this will is and as I'm encouraged today by the comments of Mr. Deputy Prime Minister and this is very important regardless whether we have development banks or we don't or we have initiatives and if the will is there mechanisms will be easy to implement Prof. Stiglitz First let me say I think that there are the needs are so great that I think that there is an opportunity for some additional initiatives whether it's Arab Development Bank or the initiative that was just mentioned just to put another context in Latin America the Arab American Development Bank is a very important institution but CAF which is the bank of a sub region the Andean Bank which has been expanding very rapidly is a very important and actually very effective institution one of the interesting things it's an institution that was founded by a group of poor Andean countries which and this institution has a better credit rating than any of the constituent countries and it does basically infrastructure investment and manages it very well it's developed a kind of competency in that specialized area so I think that this worry about an additional institution I think is overly there's too much worry about that if it's efficient I understand worry about excessive bureaucracy but some of these institutions have been able to do it on a very lean and mean basis and to specialize in one area or another there's so many different areas of infrastructure and it's not just one area there's roads, water electricity so it seems to me that there is a lot of opportunity and I think the issue going forward is to try to think through the various ways in which this could be done the modalities that say that the institutional arrangements I would like to thank also the panel and also the participants for being with us here for more than an hour listening to I feel a lot of very substantial input very thoughtful discussion on inclusive growth but also inclusive political processes so we can also see a closer collaboration but in the Arab world going all the way from to the Atlantic with Morocco and this is also the aim of the foreign bringing these countries together looking at initiatives that can be taken to revive economic growth looking at infrastructure projects looking also at energy subsidies looking at the youth skills training a lot of opportunities but also challenges personally I leave this discussion a little bit more bullish in the sense that I think there are real opportunities but of course who this transition is also happening at the backdrop of quite a suburb economic situation in the southern part of the Mediterranean that also has been quite crucial to some of the countries in question but we're seeing no more substantial growth in the US and we'll see how this develops again thank you so much to the distinguished panel and thank you so much to the participants thank you