 He's the Saudi Minister of Economy and Planning. We're also joined by the Prime Minister of Tunisia, Yusuf Shahid, as well as Rami Hamdallah, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority. We've also got the Chief Executive of the Bahrain Economic Development Board, Khaled Al-Hurmani. And we're joined by Alan Bajjani, the CEO of Majid Al-Futain, who I spoke with last night live on CNBC, I might add, but I'm actually going to kick off with you because you are the representative of the corporate world and the private sector. And from what I have gathered, speaking to you guys off the record in the green room, you know what the problems are. And the question is, are you going to be bold enough to tackle them? Well, I mean, yes, of course, because there is no point otherwise to keep them for us if you want to make any difference. So the reality is, and that's part of the discussion that you are having is, and with Khaled, we've been talking about it in the Manama meeting, I think, not two weeks ago, a few weeks ago. The reality is, when we talk about the Arab world, when we talk about entrepreneurship, startups, or just corporate business, our biggest problems are two things. One, it's scale, and two is global relevant and competitiveness. And these are two things that people don't like to talk about in this part of the world simply because it opens up wounds. You know, we have been, for the past, I would say, almost century now, since some of our countries gain independence and some of our countries get formed, we have been ingeniously working on making sure that we put barriers, you know, across the Arab world. And the reality is that we have a market that's as big as most of the largest market in the world, as Western Europe, or almost as big as the US, if not more, if we actually are smart enough to work together. And the reality, and go beyond the individual's agendas, I think the corporate world in the Arab world has been suffering from that. And in some cases, we have been complacent. I think the private sector has been complacent in a lot of way, although I think very politely and nicely putting the topic forward, but we did not do enough. And if we want to promote innovation, if we want to really promote growth, we need a market. We need to give our youth a market. We need to give people that want to invest in the Arab world a market, and we need to give ourselves a market. And short of that, we'll never have the San Francisco or the Palo Alto or the wherever that exists elsewhere. Silicon Valley exists not because people that are born in that part of the world are born smarter, simply because they have a good education system and they also have a market. Our market, we take it 3, 4 million at a time. And if we really want to reach somewhere, it is about two things. Scale and scale will give us global competitiveness and global relevance. I want to bring Khaleddin on this because we were discussing this a little earlier about FDI and meaningful FDI. You don't want dribbles, you want something significant. What can we expect going forward from these other governments when we're talking about FDI and corporates from the United States, from Europe, how do you make yourself competitive and attractive enough for this kind of thing to happen? Well, first of all, you have to make sure you have an ecosystem and an economic environment that's attractive to that investor. So when we're here talking about the fourth industrial revolution in Davos, and if I was to speak honestly, I think the Arab world has missed the first, the second and the third industrial revolution. We really have to make sure we grab the fourth industrial revolution. So if we have an investor coming in from the United States or Europe, they are going to want to look at scale, what Alan talked about. Can I access all of the market from one of the countries? How easy is trade across these countries? And today we talk about trade, digital trade, e-commerce, data. Do they have the talent? Is there a talent in that country that is trained well? And we talk about education every time we come to Davos about the Arab world. But I think we have to think now about tactical, we have to think about vocational education. And then we have to think about, on top of that, how do we allow access to funding to them and to the entrepreneurs that sometimes they serve? And I think for a region, certainly the GCC, that has close to $3 trillion, we have been net exporters of capital. Today that's changing. We see that in the public investment fund, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and investment in the country to develop the countries. But we need to accelerate that. And fourth is meaningful FDI. We have the Googles of this world, the sales force, but they have sales offices. They don't really have physical investments where they are training engineers and coders. We need to change our outlook of them not having a sales outpost, but having a meaningful impact on our country. I'll give you an example. We've welcomed Amazon into the kingdom of Bahrain. They're building the first hyperscale data center in the region. They've done that because there was competitiveness in the market. They took a bet on the scale that they can achieve in the market. And they took a view that we, as a regulator, are going to introduce talent into the market. Not everybody will take that leap of faith. We've got to make sure the building blocks are there. Mohammad, I want to ask you about that, because obviously Saudi Arabia is the biggest economy in the region. Anything that happens in Saudi Arabia has a major knock-on effect to other governments as well. Dubai, most particularly, is the most obvious one to point out. But I have to ask you, in terms of the Vision 2030, what happens in Saudi Arabia still to this day is very much dependent on the price of oil. And volatility is something that every energy minister that I have spoken to in the last month says is going to continue into 2019, and they're very concerned about it. How do you plan around that? Because you not only have to deal with the oil prices, but you also have to deal, frankly, with the effect of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I mean, you have to deal with sentiment. How do you make Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East attractive, given all of these kinds of constraints? I think your question is about hope and a credible model in the region where people can see evidence and results on the ground. So Saudi Arabia took that initiative and started Vision 2030 two years ago. Recently, for example, the joint effort with the United Arab Emirates is a significant evidence that two countries can sit down and agree very specific targets measured where they can show the world how can issues be resolved. So talking about borders and trade, one of the examples between the Council of Saudi and UAE is basically we decided that the borders would be easier, digitized, accessibility of trucks, et cetera, instead of taking more than 72 hours. It will take now, hopefully, three to four hours. But that's two significant economies, talking about issues, talking about regulations, talking about how a business in the UAE can automatically be a business. In Saudi Arabia, I'm vice versa. So there are hundreds of those initiatives. Our objective is to lead the region and give hope to entrepreneurs, to investors, but equally in-house in Saudi Arabia. We've realized that investors, FDI, talking about FDI, need to see also a framework, a best practice. Beyond the human capital, which is a big challenge for the whole region and employment, et cetera, we've also realized that rules, regulations, the legal environment, the logistics, and the checklist is so huge. Hence Vision 2030, and our objective regionally is to make sure that the youngsters, the foreigners, people living in Saudi Arabia have hope and have a reference and have something they can relate to. How likely is it that we're going to see a change in terms of the borders? Because obviously, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made a lot of steps that far. But frankly, you don't see that happening between other governments. What's it gonna take? Well, our hope is that when people see this model kicking and working, they actually ask to join. And there is no way but to be practical about it. I mean, we can always talk. The Middle East, since the early 30s, we've been talking about issues, challenges, wars, conflicts. I think the time now is right to talk about solutions and talk about realistic solutions that can be implemented on the ground. I'd like to bring in the Prime Minister of Tunisia on that because frankly, you are not dealing just with the daily costs of living in Tunisia. You're dealing with this major political cost of pushing through IMF and World Bank reforms. And that's frankly something that has caused protests on the street. And now you've got a lot of people saying that since 2011, Tunisia really hasn't moved on. So you're dealing with a whole host of other challenges. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation and to share those thoughts about the strategic outlook of the Middle East. The Middle East, which is a complex region, sharing common issues, all the issues that you mentioned. But I would like to say that probably North Africa, there are a lot of common issues with the Middle East, but there are some differences, I guess. For example, in terms of competitiveness, I don't agree that we are not competitive at all. If you see a country like Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, we can see a lot of foreign companies producing high-value-added products, recruiting engineers, doctors, things like that in those countries. Now, of course, we are living in a special situation after 2011 and the revolution of what was called the Arab Spring. So the situation is totally different because we're going through political transition and this has a cost. And we're paying between bracket the cost of this political transition. It has a cost because the economy suffered during the last few years. Then we had the IMF coming, but a country like Tunisia before 2011 used to grow at five percent, six percent a year. But of course, it was not a democracy and there is a kind of learning curve to reach the democratic objectives. And we consider that in Tunisia, for example, we succeeded in implementing this democracy, building democratic institution with free and fair election and writing a new constitution in 2014, giving rights to minorities, things like that, which is very important than today, but this has impacted the economy and we don't forget that we were also attacked by terrorists. All the Minna region is threatened by terrorist attacks and many countries suffered from terrorist attacks from ISIS, from Al-Qaeda, including Tunisia of course, who had been attacked three times in 2015. For a country, for a tourist country, of course, this was the goal of the terrorist groups and this impacted the tourism industry, but also the economy of course, since tourism is, I mean, represent an important share in our economy. So, I mean, I think the model now, at least in North Africa is being, and this is probably the challenge today is about social and economic challenges and in Tunisia, we are embarked in stronger forms of our economy and this has a cost, of course. As I mentioned, the democracy costed for Tunisia, but we considered this cost, still we can manage this cost. The cost was that the economy suffered, the production was stopped for many production, like phosphate, like oil, et cetera, and because, as I mentioned, there's a learning curve, people did not understand well what is freedom, what is democracy, after living so many years and there are one political color, one political regime, et cetera, so this is very important and I think... It isn't a new story, is it? I mean, this is the story of the region that we talk about every single time we sit at the World Economic Forum. This is something that's, you price it in, isn't it? I mean, at this point, you're pricing in the conflict and the care and the... I would refer to the feedback we're getting here from Davos, from the bilateral meetings we have from multinational companies who's very interested in the Middle East and for them, if I address the scale issue and the FDI issues and the geopolitical issue, they do realize the potential. It's a very rich region, under the ground, above the ground, demographics, IT savvy societies, the Red Sea, how much trade goes through it. People do realize the potential, but they also ask us, especially governments, to connect the dots. I mean, we've spoken to the Chinese, the BRI, Middle East is a must. If they want that to succeed, Middle East is a must. So what do we have to do? We have to do X, Y, Z. But we also have to talk among each other. This is very critical and hence I refer again back to the UAE Saudi Arabia model because we want to establish a reference for others to follow. If we succeed two big nations with two big GDPs, I think we will have a better chance and a better opportunity for the future. I want you to jump in. Yes, just one thing. I want to say two things. One is, I don't think we can talk about competitiveness globally in terms of examples. I'm talking about the economies, how relevant we are. Number two, I think what happened, so after Dubai and the UAE, I think Vision 2030 has been a breath of fresh air for the private sector. That's a fact. Because we shouldn't also forget these things. I think what's happening today between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is really exemplary. And I totally agree with the accent. See, if this actually becomes a reality and it's moving at a fairly, I mean, in fairness, it's moving at a quite rapid pace. If this becomes a reality, I totally agree. From a private sector, as Majlal Foutaim, we invest in every part of the Arab world. We put our money where our mouth is. And if actually we get to this frictionless reality, this would be fantastic. He just promised me that one cinema every month in Saudi Arabia. Starting 28th of January in Jeddah in the Ratsimo. So the reality is, yes, the reality is there is a very resilient and I think vibrant private sector in the Arab world that is willing and that's actually putting his money where their mouth is, but the reality is if this actually becomes real, we are actually up to a totally different standard. If you can take that model and actually expand it, this could be a solution. But this is the difficulty, isn't it? Because when you talk to a company, for example, like Kareem, I speak with these gentlemen all the time and they're telling me each country is absolutely specific and we have to have a plan for each different country. How do you get there? I mean, Halaad, you've been talking about this with me for a couple of years now. And I think you're probably best place to talk about the way forward because, let's face it, Bahrain has been in a difficult spot for quite some time. We have a small market number. So access to our neighboring markets is key. You know, Fadi Kandur says we forget that somebody sitting in California has the ability to scale all the way to New York. It's a huge market. And the same thing is with China. If you're sitting in Shenzhen, you can go and expand all over China. So, and the European provides that. So scale is extremely critical. I think Kareem and Suga are exceptions. They went and grew and developed their companies in each market. Not every company is gonna be able to do that. That's not easy for an entrepreneur to do. How do we do it? I think what His Excellency has mentioned about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE talking is a great template. I think the more countries we can add to that template, the better because opening up all of our markets, harmonizing our regulation. Sometimes it's about not just cross-border trade, but can I own 100% ownership in the same way in the UAE or in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Bahrain? If the rules are changing in each country, if they're not harmonized, it is a very difficult task for an entrepreneur to understand. Okay, let me figure out the regulatory environment here. So they don't scale very quickly. And that's something that we need to solve for. I wanna bring in all the Palestinian Prime Minister and ask you about the fact that you're a country that essentially is operating under occupation. And at the same time, when there are significant donations from neighbors, those always do come with strings attached. And it's as if it's an elephant in the room. First of all, thank you for allowing me this opportunity to meet with this incredible audience here. Really, our situation is unique in Palestine. Imagine a country working under occupation. Imagine where you have been 52 years under occupation. If you talk about the West Bank only, you talk about 64% of the land under full Israeli military occupation. You can have no investment. You cannot build a school. You cannot build a clinic even there. You talk about Gaza. Gaza has been under siege for the last 12 years. Imagine that despite all of this, actually, we have been able to build a resilient economy, actually. And I must say that recently our growth ratio, actually, was about 2.3, which is incredible, actually, under the circumstances in Palestine. Actually, we have seen manifestations of the fourth industrial revolutions in Palestine. This is the Salot, actually. This virtual global economic community, actually. It helps us, actually. Now we have online shopping, for instance. Women will go and make loads and sell it through the social media, actually. This helps us, actually. If you look at, for instance, our GDP, if we compare our GDP between 2015 and last year, for instance, it was increased by 6%, actually. It was increased under all circumstances. So, really, we managed to build through entrepreneurship. We have startup businesses. We have incubators at each university in Palestine. We have a technical incubator, actually, where universities will look after certain innovative projects and commercialize them. And we have been successful. We have a special program at the school. But, sir, I wanna ask you, I mean, in terms of what you need from neighbors and what you need from the international. We need mobility. Mobility, actually. You know, we are under occupation and the only passage for us is Jordan. We need, actually, to see our products being waived of tuition, the customs, actually. This is very important for us as a Palestinian. I know we signed some agreements, but unfortunately, some of these agreements have not applied yet, actually. Maybe Saudi Arabia applied, actually, this agreement, but other countries still, actually, they have not applied this. We need, actually, mobility. Mobility is very important. Imagine, you talk about thousands of checkpoints inside the West Bank. You cannot leave Gaza. Sometimes, we wanted to export flowers from Gaza to Europe, for instance. By the time that you get to Europe, actually, they're damaged. So, mobility is very important. We have no mobility even inside cities, inside Ramallah or inside Nablus. So, this is really a huge hindrance before our people. Can I build on the sustainability argument and back to your first question, oil price volatility, et cetera? I think we have to also address the fact that, particularly the GCC, a commodity base, economy still highly depends on oil, but the recent developments around alternative energies, gas, solar, wind has been significant. The amount of investment done by the government-owned entities and government-related entities has been significant. So, that's one. The other thought I like to share also is the local content. I think the Middle East is not only rich in history and heritage and great stories, but also in a massive potential of local contents where export also should become a major revenue for these countries. An example in Saudi Arabia, when we did our energy price reforms, and it was a big shock for the system. But, however, when you looked at it later around who should be benefiting from this and who should not, we looked at export-led industrial companies who create jobs, who are local content-driven, who have a multiplier effect on GDP, and we said, okay, we can work with you through these energy prices and other government initiatives. I think also the agility and the ability of the government to adapt into these reports. Not something that Middle East governments aren't necessarily known for. Absolutely. So, this is very important. I mean, yes, reforms are critical and important, but also the ability to lead and adapt to changes and needs of the private sector is a great success factor. Yes, and we in Palestine actually, we've got adapted actually. We have four major elements in our economy, the government, the private sector, the banking sector, and the expertise actually. And we've really been doing a great job together actually. And this is one of really the benefits out of this joint venture between the four elements. Is there an international role to play here, though? Obviously, the United States seems to believe that a peace plan put together by the Sun and Law of the President is something that might actually help solve some of the region's problems. You know, in Palestine, we're committed actually to the two states' vision, actually, Palestine side by side with Israel in peace and harmony. But I must be clear here. Unfortunately, actually, the American administration, really, the steps they have taken, when we signed those two accords back in 1993, there were certain final settlement issues which should be handed through negotiations for instance, the borders, Jerusalem, refugees. All of a sudden actually, the American administration have decided that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. They moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Constantly refugees, for instance. This is an issue which has to be dealt with under international law, according to UN Resolution 194 and the Arab Peace Initiative. All of a sudden, Mr. Trump is saying that the number of Palestinian refugees is 45,000. Actually, we are 5.9 million refugees in the holy globe. At this point, are people generally, and I see, I've been having these conversations. This is the international definition of refugee suffrage. Of course, but I think that at this point, the folks that we're speaking to here on CNBC, at least, seem to be pricing in the fact that the message is coming out of the White House, whether it be with regards to U.S.-China trade or to the security even in the Middle East. The poem is what we keep hearing from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Does he speak for the White House? I mean, you're kind of pricing in here the fact that Washington is no longer a reliable partner in that sense. And so how, as a business community, and I'd love to hear from Alan on this, how, as a business community, as an investor, can you really plan ahead given the fact that right now it seems as if global growth is a deep concern? And a lot of that has to do with Washington. Well, look, one, I think, in the Middle East, businesses, private sector, are very resilient. Dealing with volatility, we're great at it. And most of our countries have had their fair share of volatility, so we deal with that. Now, global volatility, the way we're seeing it, I think everyone is learning the ropes. And the reality is now what's happening with China is something that is fairly new. It is very clear that it has a big impact on China and we're starting to see actually what's happening in China as well as others. So that's something that we have to factor in. Now, the reality of the Middle East, when you look at it in general from a business standpoint, it's becoming more difficult to import from China. Settling payments to China is becoming much more difficult than before. So there is some realities that may not be policy, but there are actually realities on the ground and they are being implemented. From a business standpoint, we are, as Masjid Foutain, for example, we are committed and actually focused on growing our region, driving sustainable growth in our region, which is the Middle East at large, the Minasar region. And basically, this is something where you start to actually value the stability that we live in. When you look around us today, you look at the US, you look at what's happening in Europe, you look at England, you look at some other parts of the world, we realize that actually we are much more stable and much more predictable. And I think what happened in Saudi with Vision 2030 has actually, in a way, directly for Saudi and indirectly for the region, has set a vision, a plan, and a pace that I think was badly needed. And businesses like us benefit from that because we see, we know the trends, the headwinds, or basically the tailwinds, and we see other governments that are actually either following suit or basically making sure that they are at par. Building on that thought, I think if we look at it from our point of view and look at our investment powerhouses, PIF, IDA, et cetera, when they looked at the West for opportunities, the spectrum is wide open, individual companies, infrastructure opportunities, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the other way around, I think the more institutional build we have, the more visible we are to the rest of the world. I'll give you an example, privatization in our part of the world. The minute we put a standard and establish the PPP law, and we've actually spent a lot of time bringing this to the best practice globally, this month alone in Saudi Arabia, we've done four transactions, all of them are multi-billion dollar, foreign investors. Because they want to come to an infrastructure where they know exactly what it takes, what's their part in the PPP, and what's the government role, et cetera, et cetera. I think collectively, the more we institutionalize our businesses and government leads, the global investment community will look at the opportunities differently. But also the regional investment community. Allow me. If you'll allow me. Allow me to say actually, when you talk about development actually, without security and the stability in any region, you cannot achieve that. But look what's happening in the Middle East and Yemen and Iraq and Syria and Palestine. Actually what we need to see, we need real to see stability, we need to see security. And one of the major actually causes for this insecurity is the Palestinian conflict actually, the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Once I believe it is settled, I think too many conflicts can be settled in the region. So I don't think we can talk really about real development without stability and security. So security and the stability are of high importance for any development, whether in Saudi Arabia, whether in Palestine, in Tunisia, this is actually very important. And we cannot ignore this actually, instead of spending billions of dollars on war now, for instance. Why don't we invest this actually in development? Colin, do you want to weigh in? Yeah, I think we have to, we can't talk about the Middle East as a whole. So when we talk about the risk-reward... Radio syncretity. There are differences. And I think we talk about the GCC, there's a different risk-reward ratio than in other countries in the Middle East. So I don't think we can talk about the Middle East in one broad brush. Clearly, stability and security is a prerequisite. But I think that, again, we're here to talk about not only FDI, but job creation. I mean, the big subject in our part of the world, 400 million people, 50% under the age of 30, that's an opportunity. These are millennials in some aging economies in the world, Japan and Europe. They complain about an aging population. We have a young population, you can unleash that potential. The challenge, though, is their expectations. They want jobs, they want quality of life. They have aspirations of what they see in other countries because of social media. So meeting those aspirations, and I think if we talk about FDI, we have to talk about job creation for jobs that our nationals will want, will aspire to. We look at not only jobs, but are they paying salaries that are attractive to our nationals? And so we've imported labor. I talk about the GCC, we've imported labor. So there's job creation, but it's not going to our nationals. It's not paying that level of salary. So I think that is something that we have to pay attention to. That's what I mean by FDI with impact. And I just say on talent, we have a venture capital firm that we've seen from Silicon Valley. They have talked about the talent that the Palestinians have, men and women, as coders, as programmers. We also need to think about mobility of people amongst our countries. And if we are going to import, why don't we look at importing smart coders from Palestine, smart coders from Syria? We need to think about the Middle East and think how we solve for all of us. Yes, I would like to add that I agree with my friend that we cannot tackle the whole MENA region, as I mentioned earlier, with the same... Because business models are different between all producing countries and others. And I think the key word is about stability here, at least in our region. Not only stability in the country. Look, for example, instability in Libya impacted the situation in Tunisia, not either at the security level, but also economically. Libya used to be a third or the second trade partner of Tunisia before what happened in Libya. So now everything is stopped. We had thousands of workers that came back to Tunisia. So instability in our neighboring countries impacted a lot Tunisia, plus the instability that happened in Tunisia after 2011. So if we'd like to talk about growth and development, we need to have political stability, security. This is another threat that was added during the last few years with all those terrorist groups. For example, in the case of Tunisia, we, as I mentioned, we invest today more than 50% of our budget for security forces and for equipment. And this is something new. So this is done. And this money is taken to develop interior region of the country, to create jobs, et cetera. So I think everything is changing, at least in our region. And we need to adapt to this change, but we need to have also social stability because all those, what's happening is impacting those vulnerable population that cannot follow globalization. And we need to have a kind of a safeness for those people to protect them. And microeconomics in our countries were really suffered during the last few years. So we need to have this microeconomic deficit stability country like Tunisia, we used to have one percent deficit in 2010 and we had six or seven percent in 2016. So before trying to invest and boost growth and create jobs, we need to stabilize the situation, including microeconomic deficit, current deficit, things like that. And then think to those population that can threat the model if those population are not really challenged and we cannot find solution for those vulnerable population. I'd like to go back to the practical solutions and do something about it. And if I take Dubai as an example, they've started their journey in the late 80s and I can't count the number of events, negative events that took place in the region from the Gulf Wars to Asian crisis to extreme volatilities and oil. I mean, the list is very long, yet Dubai is here growing, showing the world what an example could be. So again, because they've established the role model, they've established rules, regulations, security, and they've done a great job. And I always go back to what can we do about it? From a government point of view, policymakers, I think one thing, for example, we've done in Saudi Arabia is to create new sectors where it is very specific to Saudi, great for local talents. That sector is services. We do receive millions of visitors to our holy cities every year and within that, there is a huge business opportunity. So I think every country should also look within. I know the idiosyncratic challenge of the differences between the countries are massive. But also I think in Egypt, there is a great potential for farming, a great potential for soft manufacturing, and so on and so forth. In Oman, they've been doing reasonably well lately because they focused on what Oman is all about. So there is a role for individual countries to deal with the idiosyncratic challenge, but also collectively, we need to be practically thinking about what can we do about it as a region. I may add something here, actually. I think security is very important and the stability is very important, but education also, investment actually should be in education. Education is the hope for the Middle East. We should equip our students, actually, with talents, with the skills that can really equip them for the future jobs, actually. Vocational training, it's very important if we can talk about Palestine, for instance. Right now we have nine engineers for one technician. Actually, the pyramid should be reversed, actually. We should have nine technicians for one engineer. So vocational education is the future, actually, for our region in the Middle East. It's badly needed. I believe investment in education is investment in hope for the whole region. Alan, I want to bring you in on this in terms of the corporate perspective, the private sector. So many private sector individuals that I speak to on CNBC publicly and privately tell me that they feel that there's a trust deficit for the governments because whether they're sitting in Saudi Arabia, they're hesitant to invest their capital post the events of the last couple of years, whether they're sitting in the UAE and looking at the property sector and saying, oh my God, they did it again. You know, this is the thing. There's a trust deficit. How do you address that? How do you see that playing out? There is something quite interesting actually on that. This morning I was on a panel of Edelman on the Edelman Trust Barometer and there are two countries in the Middle East, UAE and Saudi Arabia that have the highest trust between people and government, which is 84% for Saudi and 80% for the UAE. And come to think about it, these are the two countries that have been doing the most for their economies. Saudi, especially lately, and the UAE. So the reality is we have, you know, I'm 46 years old almost, okay? Since I remember security was an issue in the Arab world. And it's right, you're right, it is an issue. And Palestine is a different, we can't, Palestine has a special, unfortunately it is a special case. But the reality is the solutions to the Arab world will only come from the private sector. Put aside Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where actually the governments are, have resources. There is no government in this part of the world, in our part of the world that has the ability to deal with its own issues on its own. It's the private sector and foreign direct investment from within the Arab world to within the Arab world. We export capital and we cannot invest enough in our own countries. And yes, security and stability is an issue. Without it we can't have business. You're absolutely right. But at the end of the day, we've been talking about this for 50 years and there'll always be good reasons why we can't do it. And we also have to remember, in order to foster stability and security, we have to create jobs. We have to open up for the private sector and give the opportunity to the private sector. All what we have to do, change the mindset, ease the regulation and let the private sector work. And what we are today, we are in a reactive part of the world where we are, we're consumed with issues that are real, but they're not gonna make a difference. The only difference is I think what Dubai has done, open up, just open up. And your own private sector in any country in the Middle East and other private sector within our part of the world will come and invest and create their own opportunities. We don't need governments to tell us what are the investment opportunities, we know it. But we need to be able to invest, we need to be able to get a visa to go and see what we're gonna invest and we need to be able to employ people. We know what needs to be done, but we can't do it enough. And this is what I think the Middle East needs is a wake-up call. The reality is here and we're working here. So on that thought, the governments are as enablers, making sure the financial markets in each country are stable, developed, it's very important. But I actually like to think about it as a partnership between in a transition phase, maybe the government and the private sector, maybe for some time before the private sector really can grow and compete and take charge. However, the private sector also have a list of requirements, things they need in this partnership. So again, the governments enablers make sure that stability, confidence in the market. I mean, look at the recent borrowing that took place in the region. People are willing to invest 30 money, 30 years money in the region and that's a significant signal of confidence. But we need not to get only the debt out of the global markets, but we need to get the actual investments to create quality jobs, to create opportunities sustainable for our economies and transfer of technology and the know-how. I think the story of debate is an amazing story because there was investment in infrastructure. When you build a modern airport, modern buildings, ports, build a modern airline, nobody thought any country in the Middle East could rise to global standards and invest. And so, and people questioned the Dubai model, but it has been proven over time. So it was an investment in hard infrastructure and I think many countries in the Gulf are now looking at investing in their airports, in their ports. So I think it was an investment in infrastructure which is key on top of stability. And China is a good example of this. Once you build that modern infrastructure and I think that's where the government needs to lead, then the private sector can build on top of that. It builds trust, they will use the ports, they will use the airports, you will have foreign investment coming to your country. Then the next stage is soft infrastructure, meaning we have to think about smart employment policies, smart business operation policies and do it at a national level and synchronize it beyond our country. Because ultimately when you look at many countries that have done this in the world, the Singapore's of this world, Hong Kong's and so forth, they've done both. And I think we are on the right track, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Vision 2030 has highlighted this. We in Bahrain have opened up 98% of our business sectors to foreign ownership. Only 2% have been restricted to local ownership. We've invested in the new knowledge economy. So I think you have to do the both. You can't just look at hard infrastructure, you have to look at soft and I think the combination is what we need to be aspiring to. And speaking of that kind of synchronization, Prime Minister when you're sitting in Tunisia and you're looking at the fact that the United States has really left the park when it comes to regional influence, what are you expecting from your neighbors because you don't want to be left behind? I mean globally speaking in the mean and more especially in the North African region, we are of course missing economic integration. Now those countries are quite similar in terms of cultural, in terms of geography, in terms of common issues. Those countries have a low level of growth, have a high level of unemployment, especially among higher educated. This is one of the main problems, for example for Tunisia, is that one third of an unemployed people own a higher degree. This creates a lot of pressure in governments since those people, I mean your economy needs to create jobs for those people, skilled jobs, and this is make a lot of pressure. And this is the same I guess for North African countries. So we need to have a better integration between our countries which is not working today because we have, our economies are really, can be complementary one of the other, but we're not taking advantage of that. And the private sector, we need to create a better environment for it. We need to create what we call an enabling environment. And to help the private sector to jump in. And this, that's why we're trying to reform our investment code, our fiscal fiscality. We try to have an implement PPP project in order to involve the private sector because I know that the public service is saturated and we cannot, but this is also start with education because if you go to the, it's a minor region, education is not really creating for the students the capability or the capacity to create its own project and employing other people. It's always asking governments and public service for jobs. And you know the situation of the public service in different countries of the North African region at least and deficit, et cetera. So we need to change our education. We need to adapt it more to the job market and those strong and deep reforms sometimes they're not taking place because they need time and they need, they're not easy to challenge. They need to conduct this challenge and to have later results. But at the, I mean in the short term we need to work on digitalization for example because we can shorter the time. For example in Tunisia we have 15% of people that graduates from the university are on ICT and I mean many of them are living to Europe today and to the US because they find better job opportunity and so this is a huge, I mean loss for our economy. So working on education, working on vocational training very important, you know, we are sharing the same issue finally and trying to work on digitalization since, I mean for example I think Tunisia entrepreneurship can be much easy when we go to those kind of activity. I think one missing point we haven't touched is innovation, the importance of innovation and the role of governments as incubators making sure those talents in the Middle East because we do believe that talents have no nationality. It could be a young boy in Tunisia or a younger in Palestine who is extremely talented and could make a real difference not only for their country but for the whole world. I think also we have a responsibility to make sure that we provide the frameworks and the opportunities for those talented innovators. One, scholarships. Again, I think GCC have succeeded significantly in the early 70s by sending students abroad and they came back and now they're leading their nations. I think I met a Korean science and technology university today and very specifically they are very specialized in artificial intelligence and all the global trends of industry 4.0, et cetera. I think we should also not be shy of asking for help. And you know, scholarship is one tool where we definitely with the demographics we have we can learn from the rest of the world and people can come back and add value by being innovative and entrepreneurs. And I just wanted to bring you back in as we wrap up. I just want to jump in on talent. You know there is on the panel and outside of the panel the Middle East since we're talking about strategic outlook the Middle East is divided into sets of countries. A set of countries that are net exporters of talent and the set of countries that are net that wear net importance of talent. I think equally there is a balance in the representation on the panel. The reality is the countries that have been net importers of talent are very seriously working now on actually dealing the issue of employment of their nationals which is absolutely the right thing to do. By opening up their economies, by modernizing their infrastructure, by putting in the framework and investing smartly in doing so. So I come from a country who is a net exporter of talent. So I know what I'm talking about and I'm exported. The reality is those countries that are net exporters of talent are the ones that are actually going to run out of time before they realize that their talent that actually is a big source of remittances. A big source of foreign currency coming to the country. A big help to their actually current account and so on are very soon and in my opinion the coming five years are going to live in your reality and it's going to be a very hard work up core because reforming the education takes a generation. These reforms they have to be done but they take time. The only solution is to run as fast as we can to create jobs in those countries. And by doing less, not by doing more and by trusting the private sector. And I know it may be sometimes a bit counterintuitive but the solution will only come from there and I think we only have three to five years. Before we're going to realize that our basically our talent is not going to be as exportable because the market dynamics are changing. I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. It's a fantastic discussion. Thank you gentlemen so much for joining us and thank all of you as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.