 Let me start by saying a salamu alaykum, yaran Abu Dhabi. And it is good evening. Now I think it is evening. It's no longer afternoon. Speakers, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to discuss a very important topic on the economic and social issues of our region. Let me start by thanking the organizers for the invitation and welcoming all of you to this workshop. As I'm a person who is in economics and finance and not in politics, so I'll be mainly speaking about those issues. There are more qualified speakers to speak about the social issues and political issues. But for our region, it's anticipated that economic growth in Arab countries, of course, like the rest of the world, will be affected by several factors during this year and next year, including slower global growth, tight global and regional financial conditions, volatility in commodity prices, and country-specific factors. All those factors are likely to expose vulnerabilities arising from very high public debt to certain countries and weak external conditions. And here, I mean balance of payments in terms of economic issues. The growth this year by the forecast of the Arab Monetary Fund is expected to be around 2.2% for Arab countries and next year to increase to 3.3% for the inflation. And if we exclude three or four countries in our region, it's expected to moderate to stabilize at 3.6% next year. On the country's level, some countries in the region are experiencing several economic and financial challenges, crisis, whatever, with described the situation leading to increasing the already high unemployment. And some countries in the region also have issues of refugees and humanitarian crisis. So those tensions will, of course, increase risk premium, making borrowing even much harder. We at the Arab Monetary Fund are from our part doing all what we can do in a sense of design and manage the reform, the economic reform programs in several counties. So far on this year, we have provided financial assistance exceeding 1 billion euros that are since the beginning of this year. We also provide technical assistance and capacity building and provide also place for policy dialogue between our member countries. Today, we are very fortunate to have very well-known speakers. I will have no difficulties introducing each one of them as probably most of you or all of you you know those speakers. They have different backgrounds, and they have rich experience to talk about economic and social issues in our region. We will discuss regional economic landscape, plural growth, development issues, diversification strategies, sustainability, and demographic trends, education, food security, water, social issues, and developments.