 Good afternoon. Very welcome to a very important session, though I understand that not all participants in the World Economic Forum's meeting here in Dalian agree with that, because the participation rate is somewhat lower than the demographics of Dalian would suggest. Am I doing something okay? Thank you. As I said, very welcome. My name is Viktor Haberstad. I'm the moderator of this session. The session participants sit to, right in front of you, I'm not going to make introductory statements about them, because each of them is easily identified, well known and we should use our time as efficiently as possible by talking about the subject itself. The gentlemen, actually they're all gentlemen, it's quite interesting. I mean, this panel is in no way representative of the fact that half the world is women, but still we will talk about demographics. It is quite clear that demographics is so high on our agenda because there are a number of really major trends which require us to talk about it. Just to mention four major trends very quickly for you. In industrialized countries, the West, Japan, fertility rates have gone down, but are possibly going up again. A second major trend is that in the baby boomers, investment countries are reaching retirement age. Thirdly, fertility rates are likely to go up in emerging economies, too, with most working population being concentrated, especially in the emerging markets. And the final major trend, I believe, that immigration flows are continuing, increasing, and thus lead also demographically to multicultural societies. And there are consequences of these trends, which we will be discussing in this meeting. One of the consequences, for instance, that 40 percent of the world population live in what we would call brick countries, countries which are rapidly growing. That's more than double the amount of people living there 40 or 50 years ago. Now the questions which we can address here are, of course, not unlimited, but we can try to cover as much ground as possible. We do that in an initial round, as we have agreed, by each addressing one question and then subsequently drawing you in. So please, if you have questions, prepare yourself to ask those, because we will have real time to have an interaction with the audience. One of the major questions which I believe we need to address, and I'm addressing this then first to Gerard Hülten, is who is going to benefit from these demographic shifts. Which industries are going to benefit most from what we are now confronting? I mentioned some of the trends, there are other trends we could put on slides, but I don't think that's necessary. Gerard, who is going to benefit from this? Which specific industries? Well I think that it would be probably in this session very hard to give definitive answers in terms of specific industries and sectors, but let me try and frame the question, which the way that I would probably start constructing the answers that I'm, and the first part where I would start would basically asking the question who and what kind of business activities tend to benefit from a growing and ageing population. And obviously healthcare is one that was always mentioned in this case, but it's dawned on me lately that one needs to actually be much more creative and much more broad in terms of how you put your arms around that and expanding that to, for instance, asking the questions about how urban services will be modified and will grow with the changing needs of an ageing population. There is also the housing area which recently dawned on me also in a discussion with one of the world's leading elevator manufacturers. They're looking at the ageing population as a huge opportunity because the housing or living preferences and modalities of an ageing population will change and they will be probably increasingly be living in apartment blocks with a huge growing need for elevators. But that's one part of the other question, if I may just shift the focus and going into maybe modifying the question saying which countries will benefit of this because it's sort of the benefit is not necessarily only sector specific. And here I would just point to the demographic advantage. Those countries that have the demographic advantage or those who can obtain the demographic advantage and the obtention of the demographic advantage obviously starts to touch on the whole labour migration issue. And lastly, the point on skills with the demographic developments, skills shortages are already today very, very difficult. And with the demographic outlook that we're looking at, it's only going to get worse. So those countries that have the appropriate skill delivery systems in place to accommodate this kind of demographic shift will also be a beneficiary of this development. Thank you. It raises one or two questions. We'll get back to that later, maybe also from other members of the panel. Let me quickly turn to Ms. Thiam and because included in your remarks was a reference to gender, so to say. And as I said to you yesterday in a conversation we had, what is the potential of girls education? I phrase it as a general question to you. A large part of the world has girls who have little education and if they were to have more education would be incredibly impacting on the economy, on GDP growth, and on the potential development of these societies. So is that so? Or is that wrong? Is that good for the insurance companies? I'll try to do the first part of the question first. I think you're absolutely right. Girls education is a major issue, particularly in developing countries. The statistics actually tend to be mind-boggling. In the 90s I was in Africa in government in the Ivory Coast and I did quite a bit of work on this issue. And one thing we'd done was a demography study which showed that educated women in towns had 2.1 children and illiterate women in the countryside at 8.2. And that is a straight line with a correlation on North Square which is extremely high. And it actually debunked a myth which is that that's cultural. It is not cultural. This is something you observe universally from Tunisia to the Ivory Coast to Brazil. If you educate women, fertility will fall. But not only does it fall, but those 2.1 children will be healthier. On average, they'll be better fed. The chances of survival will be better. The longevity will be higher. And out of the 8.2 that you get in the countryside, actually a proportion will die. And the surviving ones will probably have some optimal weight and all kinds of associated problems. So it is the single most powerful lever actually to transform society and to reach a higher level of development. So there is a lot of effort going into that. And all the countries who have gone through that demographic transition have seen that accompanied with a very strong rise in GDP growth in labor productivity, improvement in health indicators and general progress in society. So it is certainly an area worth focusing on and good for development. Now to come to the second part of the question, insurance companies. We are a life insurance company. If you think about our business, it is driven first by GDP growth, then by savings rates, and then by penetration. So it is directly correlated to demography. And in all countries where there is a relatively young and growing population, we do extremely well. Because there is a phase of accumulation of wealth and the products we provide give people a vehicle or a way to achieve that. The second aspect by which we can be useful is that in developing countries, we are really the connection between savings and investment. We have liabilities in long-term currency, generally long-term liabilities in local currency, sorry. So we have an appetite for assets in local currency. And we are a very natural investor in the economy, a long-term investor in the economy of long-term capital. And that generally leads to good GDP growth. So if you look at potential in Asia, we're doing very well. And frankly, it's also largely linked to demography, sorry. Thank you. It's interesting. If I think of girls' education, one region where, I'm just wondering, Gerald, where there is perhaps less attention to it, is the region where most of your activities are? Could you elaborate on that? I think it's a bit of a fallacy that women are not being educated. I work out of Dubai and have been working in the Middle East region for the last 30 or years. And I think particularly in a country like the United Arab Emirates, they've made great strides and great achievements in female education. I like to think that when you read all these stories and everything and the reports, that really the best form of contraception, I think worldwide, must be female education because we hear that as ladies become educators, they get married later, they have fewer children. And as you just said, they become more prosperous and add more to the GDP. But in a place like Dubai, and working in the hotel industry, we have, and this is not a commercial for the company, but we have eight hotels in Dubai and four of the general managers are female, which I think is a great testament to the United Arab Emirates and what it's achieved. When we do career fairs, we find that 66% of the applicants will be female. So females are being educated in the Middle East and they're playing a much more important role than they have in the past. I just attended a conference recently where our Minister for Social Affairs, Reem al-Hashimi, is a minister. And indeed, the whole suffrage has been increased within the United Arab Emirates for the election of the Federal National Council on the 24th of September. And females have equal rights to males. I think in Saudi Arabia it is slowly coming around, but women are in business, particularly in our country. Women, thank goodness, are allowed to drive. They're probably the more sensible drivers around. But it is widely understood by the government that female education is vital for the development of the country. And I also think it's quite interesting that, you know, we talk very much about on one side we have the developed world where we say we will not have enough people, and then you have the developing world where we say we have too many people. And I think that the situation is pretty obvious that we really have to start working towards the mobility of labour, which I know the World Economic Forum has been paying a lot of attention to. And it's something that has to develop in the future. In our country where we work, especially, say, in our industry, 98% of the workforce is foreign. And that is interesting in an area where the overall Middle East, we're told, we have to create upwards of 100 million jobs in the next 15 to 20 years in order to absorb the growing population, of which at the moment the vast majority, particularly in the GCC, is under 25 years of age. So there is a lot to do, but there's a much more enlightened approach than I think the region has given credit for, and the type of press that we get. And the proof of it is very much in what's happening within the GCC, particularly in the United Arab Emirates. Thank you. Still, one wonders, of course, because in the region where your activities are, is it the same time a region with a very large high unemployment rate? Right? And so how is that demographic threat to be dealt with then? Well, I think the demographic, the whole threat has to be dealt with by concentrating on education. And within that region, there isn't enough concentration, I believe, on vocational education. Children go to school, children come out of school, and if they're qualified, or sometimes if they're not even qualified, they go on to university. And then the levels of university are not really achieving the quality that they need to achieve. And within our industry, we are very prepared, and we actually want to employ more and more regional people to work within our industry. Our tourists, our guests, expect them to go to Arabia to be interacting with Arabian stuff, which is quite a normal one for our guests. But I do think that it comes back very much to education. And again, within the GCC, where the resources exist, education is paramount and is getting the deserved attention. But certainly in other parts of the region, such as, let's say Palestine, Egypt, and the poorer areas, they need a lot more emphasis on education. Our Prime Minister and the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan four years ago pledged a billion dollars, upwards of a billion dollars to education in the Arab world. So I think that the richer countries of the Middle East do understand that if they don't help the rest of the region to be educated, then long term we will suffer, because we will have the wrong demographics as far as the foreign population versus the local population is concerned. In the United Arab Emirates, approximately 85 percent of the population, the resident population, is foreign. Thank you. Industries differ in their interest in the demographic shifts. The hotel industry and your region is very different from the manufacturing industry, Mario, in which you are. You manufacture worldwide, and maybe these demographic changes don't have any implication for your kind of industry. Am I wrong? Am I right? Yeah. Me, I am at this vision. We are in the middle of the transition between two years, the era of the protagonism when countries were divided by trade barriers and the national rule, and the global era where the markets drive economies. Today, the workforce is under shock, because in one hand it's not clear yet how to respond to the market. On the other hand, the politics management, labor groups, and the union have enormous problems to cope with the change and to safeguard the workforce. This is a problem that we have in Italy, as well as the rest of Europe, the U.S., China, and Africa. Now, the question is, how can we face it? The world wants to know. In my opinion, the answer is it, improve the education for workers in developing countries. Continuity permits the education program in the developed countries. The key to this is the web. The modern means that illuminates our way. In the past, economies were based on the specialized skills. The future will be based on the super specialized skills. For example, one upon time, a general practitioner, the diagnostic illness, then came the specialists. The future requires super specialists, meaning highly specialized in already specialized fields. Consequently, this is the general framework. We must invest more in the younger generations and in specific education. What is being done in Italy and in the rest of Europe is not enough. The silver generation needs to be required with a new skill on the job to improve in terms of the technical language and the cultural skin. In the end, the economy of the future will be about brains over brown. Thank you. I would almost ask the question, but maybe you want to respond to that later, whether there is a distinct difference between senior citizens on the one hand, Mario, and others, and other citizens on the other hand, because your kind of industry, of course, focuses in its marketing and in its manufacturing on certain age groups. You may have far less interest in, so to say, in infants and far less interest in senior citizens than you have in the bulge of the demographic pyramid. We may talk about that later. Let me first ask Timothy what we can do about leveraging, though that's a word which I shouldn't use these days. I will not use leveraging, how we can utilize senior citizens much better and to make sure that we transfer their skills and use those skills as long as possible. Because one of the remarkable things, of course, about the Western world is that the mandatory retirement age has been more or less stable for the past 50, 60 years post-Second World War, right, while these senior citizens have a much higher life expectancy. So how do you view this? I think there should be some proper stance on how we view senior citizens, how we view the aging population. Tell the fact that in China, every year, those people who age 64 stepping into 65 is totally 8 million people, 8 million, which the total population, even more than Hong Kong, the place that when they come. And secondly, we also have to know that only less than 15 percent of the aging people are really poor in health or in difficulties. The remaining 85 percent of them are active, still stick with the society, still enjoy their lives. So that's why hotel tourism still would be a very potential market for them. And even they want to be educated, they want to be in touch with this digital inclusion, so that they can continue to connect with the society. So to me, to extend the employability of the old people, to keep them in the market, first we have to relax the retirement age. I don't think there should be a mandatory retirement age, because it's subject to your health situation. As far as you can work, why don't you allow to work in different models, like hourly basis, work at home, or even work online. So you can contribute your expertise, you can keep on your knowledge and also your experience to your successor. And I think for the younger generation, they want to have you as their mentor, they want to use your experience, use your network, use your access. So we try our best to encourage the old people not to stay at home, but to keep themselves as active as possible. Yeah, that's clear, but how do we do this? So in this way, I think certainly the companies have to adopt a policy that engaging more, retire the employee to back to work. And in fact, in the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Hong Kong Bank, they have a special program to retain their retiree to back to work. And also the company also need to have some adaptation on the modification of the facilities. Like maybe some of the retired employee need to use the wheelchair, then you need to adjust your working table so that those who are on the wheelchair can still manage the computer, something like that. So I think we need a lot of adjustment. And also importantly, we have to educate young employees to welcome their retiree to come back to work. Because sometimes they will work, they will stuck their promotion. They will delay the promotion opportunity. So I think education is very important, not only the aged people, but also the young employees to have their inclusion. Before we proceed, I ask the audience, is there anyone on the panel who wishes to react to one of his colleagues? Yes, Gerald? I think that especially within the hotel business, and we were talking about it earlier, we don't really want all the old people to keep working because older people are great travellers. There's an organisation in Europe called SAGA, which is a travel agency. I like to think of it as seniors, as global adventurers. Of course. And that we get them to continue travelling because they're a huge market source. And they don't come during the peak periods, for example, on the leisure side of school holidays. They will come outside the school holidays. And a truly important source of business for us. Yep. Thank you. Gerald? Yeah, just two short reflections on something that was said here. Obviously education, it's clear that education is fundamental in any system or any addressing any issue. But I just add to that, that education alone is not really enough. We see a lot of highly educated people, but with a wrong focus. And I think this is a point that Mario was pointing to, is that you really have to be able to focus the education into something which is well aligned with the skill requirements in the labour market. And the second point that I'd like to just reflect on, and that's on Timothy's point, which is on engaging or retaining senior citizens as long as possible. And it's clear corporate or company cultures need to change in order to accommodate that. And just to refer to a recent survey that was done where we tried to gauge what kind of expectations do senior citizens have for their future or their long-term engagement in working life. And it's, if you contrast that to young people who are looking for money, career and mentorship, and then you contrast that to the older, their older colleagues who start to give much more importance to questions like independence, respect and recognition. And flexibility, which is a point that Timothy made. I think flexibility is so important for those people who get older when they work. Well, micromanaging that is a huge assignment, of course, for governance and for corporations. Because this is easier said than done, given the reluctance that will be to that flexibility, I would guess. But perhaps we could talk about it in a moment. Let me first look at the audience to see who would like to raise a question about what has been discussed so far. Gentleman in the middle, would you get the microphone over there? In one of the sessions before about consumption, there was the issue about the number of people actually living on the planet. And I mean, there was the Club of Rome initiative, you know, some years ago that actually was talking about how many people can the planet actually support. And when you talk about, you know, for example, number of cars in a place like Beijing and whatever and so forth, you clearly see there is a certain limit to the number of people on the planet. There is, for example, India that has no birth controls or no mechanisms on this, while China had one. And I was just wondering whether in this discussion of demographics, one shouldn't have also a perspective about what is the right amount of people that actually the earth can support in terms of the resources we're having? Yeah, this is a question which has been around for a few centuries and we have been trying to give answers to it. Tijano, would you like to respond to it? I mean, this is... It's a difficult question because a lot of the thinking about it is static in terms of, I mean, you can try to answer at a given technological state of the world. What we don't know is innovation always in everything, you know, whether it's productivity, agricultural productivity, environment, etc., etc. There must be a limit somewhere. It's very, very hard to put, I think, a hard figure on that. It's fundamentally every society, if you wish, has to evolve in a way that it has a sustainable, a sustainable model, a sustainable model of growth, and the problem you have is that you have spatial imbalances. As several panellists said, some countries have a demographic structure that is unsustainable because if you have a shrinking base and, you know, growing top, it's just the maths don't work. You can't feed the top, it's just not possible. And then the answer largely is migration, but the experience with aging is that it rarely makes people more liberal. So the political implementation of the type of policies that would allow you to rebalance the population is challenging for any government because it's not popular. It is necessary, but it's hard to implement politically. So how do you balance that? Sorry, just one final comment on that is that I really think that you cannot, actually it's very hard to comment because of that on the absolute number, because a 7 billion well allocated could be very well managed, 7 billion all in the wrong places creates a lot of issues. So it's just as a food starter. Gerald and then you're on and then Tim. Yeah. I may be a little bit wrong, but I get the impression having attended quite a number in our World Economic Forum regional sessions and the forums in Davos that it is very much the only topic that is not discussed. We always talk about the need for economic development, for economic expansion, and yet we never try to really address this question, how many is enough and at what level of consumption is it enough? Because it's not sustainable whether it takes 50 years, 100 years or 1,000 years, we're going to run out of everything eventually. And our biggest problem is there are probably too many of us or the way we consume is not sustainable. And I think that the World Economic Forum should address it a lot more aggressively and come up with opinions because I think people are too sensitive to it for whether it's religious reasons, for example within my religion, the Catholic religion where it doesn't want to be talked about, where we're told don't practice contraception and everybody does. It's something that has to be addressed and I think it's a great question. Jeroen? Yes, so obviously a difficult question and I'm not one to advocate any regulatory limitations on population growth. But just to highlight the paradox here, which is on one hand we're looking at a tremendous population strain on the world and when you then contrast that to the labour market which is increasingly demonstrating or reporting back rampant skill shortages even during these morose economic times globally employers report, the one in three employers report that they can't feel the jobs that they have. So obviously I think I go with the direction of TM which is to say we really need to look at on a global scale at the fluidity of the labour markets not only national labour markets but global labour markets. Yeah, though our governance systems don't really allow for that do they? I'm just thinking you were talking about the regulator you don't want to be the regulator but we have a regulator on monetary issues we have a regulator on environmental issues could we have a population regulator I mean I leave it as an open question Timothy. The same as I want to mention is that if we want to regulate the population it means that we want to have some population gender or population policy but who is going to do this the UN or which country I think all are dangerous for us so I think maybe back to the basic is under the natural adjustment and including the my way worker can help something because you know just in some country they have a lot of maze that export or work in other countries to balance off the shortage of the main so I think this can be a natural marketing demand and supply issue that when there ever is a need and the important issue is that we have to streamline the policy that allow the migrant worker to work in other place and also to provide proper position with insurance and mandatory provenance fund such and such so that when they go back to their home they can really enjoy their later life with tourists enjoyment and education which we have very much in Dubai where every employer has to pay into a fund for his foreign employer when they leave after a number of years he gets his lump sum to take back with him whether it's enough or not another question but at least it does recognize the fact and it leaves us have open to allow people to come into his country to share in their wealth exactly let me look to the audience again are there other questions in the audience no I'm the journalist from Sino the biggest portal website in China I want to ask that we know in China there is family planning and when family is forced to have only one child on one hand China makes great contributions to global population control but on the other hand we know children in China they are so lonely because they don't have many brothers or sisters as well their parents are also lonely because they don't have much company so how do you treat this problem and just now you mentioned the freedom but the freedom in China is relative thank you thank you this of course is a very complex question it's a complex question because every region in the world every country in the world has not only its own political system but also its own cultural systems plural sometimes religion and in some cases that implies birth control and in others it does not and that all has social and sociological impacts as you rightly refer to I don't know whether this do any of the panelists want to to react to this do they have a view yes well yeah I will not go in into the into the politics of this but maybe just to highlight a few realities of the of the current policies and that is that the workforce in China might be still growing but just for a few years and after a few years even in China the workforce will be declining now that decline is going to accelerate and if you then look at it over a medium-term time span what you're looking at is less workers supporting more non-working age working age population and in order to make up for that what something that I call the productivity challenge of demographics China would have to produce on average every year 1.5 percent labor productivity improvement in order to in order to compensate for the change ratio now in today's situation where China is is doing doing trying to reduce its employment economic growth to 7 percent 1.5 percent might seem like a a piece of cake but will China be able to do 7 percent 10 percent 15 20 years from now probably we'll be looking at a gradually declining economic growth and then the one and a half percent will become a major major challenge what a commentators Timothy I think what you're concerned about it will be also not necessary to be true because in the coming 20 years maybe the industrial trade or type of China will change because now we are on manufacturing but later on maybe on service on service industry or on IT technology that means you don't need to have too much a huge wall of labor that means and at that moment if we are our so-called population size when we're stable then it may not be a problem but I think as you asked about one child policy I do think that should need a lot of infrastructure to back up this policy like this sustainability of manpower supply the sustainability of parental care after your parents growing over who's going to take care I think all this requires a lot of infrastructure social policy and social provisions thank you any other yeah thank you well I think it still comes back to what was said earlier is that we're not looking we keep looking at this as a national problem rather than a global problem and we just don't want to talk about the mobility of labor and again I see if people can be brought in to share the wealth that are placed at the GCC and they come in as guest workers why would it not be possible in five 10 years time if this demographic time bomb actually occurs that people from other parts of the world wouldn't come to work in China and I think that it's something that the whole human race has to really start to understand that the world is all ours is everybody's and this mobility of labor though it may seem a little bit altruistic but I think it will happen that by necessity because as you said the Chinese economy will grow they will need people in the service industry and they will need people from Africa and other parts of the world to come and work here if I may I would find it fascinating because it's something that we've done for most of history of mankind exactly the stopping of migration is a modern invention up to the 19th century but now everything has been resolved from Ireland to everywhere you couldn't have enough somewhere you just moved and I was climate change you moved in China you might have mandatory contraception now but if you were wealthy enough if the wealth was spread throughout China you would have voluntary contraception okay you wouldn't have one child you'd have two children but it would still be not enough probably in the longer term to replace the population but on a more positive note I think I came the first time in Dalian in 1984 I don't know if you were born but um it's a very positive thing that we can sit here if someone had told me then that I would sit at the world economic forum meeting here and that a young Chinese journalist would ask that question I probably would have been skeptical so there's reason for being optimistic thank you others in the audience yes in the the lady yes I think to build on the question that was just asked I was wondering the economists reported quite recently about the male female split particularly in the younger generation and I was wondering how the panel saw that playing out and I think particularly building on the comments from Mr. Lawless about the how that would impact globally through the global migration Raoul who was the taker on this thank you you're on well um let me give a stab at it the and linking it to the the last notion there of the of the global migration I think it is it is very very clear that global migration is set to increase despite the in some areas of the world there is an increasing reticence to actually actually allow for it but it is set to increase and and and drivers for that increases is is is really lies in the in the in the labor market and the skill requirements and how those those skill requirements are being met and that is is where I would connect in with the with the with the gender split the the the importance here again goes back to the how do we link the education systems with the labor markets in such a way that the the uh the uh irrespective of which gender but I think particularly the female part of the population actually focuses in on increasingly on on skills that are hugely in in need in the labor markets I think also as employers particularly to try to to employ more females in our industry and we need a badly within the hotel industry we have to become a lot more enlightened as to how we do that in terms for example of providing crash facilities of having paternity and maternity leave and I know everybody says oh you're just adding on cost to it but if we really want to get loyal employees and to give good career prospects to women we've got to get over this very old fashioned view that if you're going to have babies you've got to stop work forever and this this is still happening a lot I think it's incumbent on us to do an awful lot more than we're doing Yeah, Jeroen Just one one addition because always when we talk about the gender balance in in the labor markets we tend to have a spine reaction to after all of the well-meaning introductions to to fall back on something that we relate to much much more comfortably and that goes in into the into promoting women for for manage management positions as as as also you pointed out and that's that's very very good but the real impact it's not going to be in the top management jobs the real impact is going to be how well we are going to be able to to attract and to accommodate female female workforce lower down in the hierarchy that's where the masses are I think that's absolutely right it leads me to a question which I'd like to take each of the panel members ask them to to think about what they believe must be the priority in their various regions if I may assign each of you your own region just hypothetically right what must be the main demographic policy action that's never a policy action for a year or for two years but it's always you know a generation policy action given that this is demographics it's obvious what the dilemma is in China which was raised a moment ago it's also obvious what the dilemma is in some other regions what is the recommended priority policy action for instance in the Gulf Gerald well I was saying the Gulf that we have to continue with our enlightened immigration policy where people are allowed to come in and work okay I can understand the country like the United Arab Emirates where it's outnumbered by 80 20 or whatever by foreigners that they don't want to allow people to stay forever but they will give long-term residency and they will allow people to continue to renew their employment visas so it gives very good employment prospects to foreigners to people I believe it must give priority to Arab people to come into that part of the world to maintain their culture and their own heritage but the burning issue for us is to ensure as Goran was saying that we have relevant education this is why I've been trying very hard to get more and more vocational education that will suit specifically our industry right to the point of actually we want to set up within the industry in Dubai a vocational institution for travel tourism and hospitality so that we can train people who will then look at especially with local people as well as foreign residents living in the city who will then be quite happy to come come to this vocational school know that they will have employment because the industry is supporting the vocational school so education is is absolutely vital and that places like Dubai continue to show the example with their enlightened approach to to female employment and to female equality within society but that's probably not contentious is it no no not at all can you say something which is contentious I would tell you but even a little story we within our Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management which is our small university where we do foundation courses during the summer period for people from the Emirates Emirati as the nationals are called to think about coming into the hotel business because culturally there's a bit of resistance because they don't want to be associated with alcohol or they just feel that it's not something that they really want to do we show them that there are lots of jobs other than that associated with alcohol if they want to work in a hotel and I was giving a lecture once to to a group of ladies of Emirati ladies about the hotel industry during this foundation course and at the end of it one lady in the in the questions and answer put up her hand and she said would you consider doing a cocktail reception or a reception some evening and invite our parents so you can tell them what you've told us so they can then realize we've made the right choice and then one of the other girls put her hand up and she said and yes that's a great idea and if you do it would you please invite my uncle and aunt to come along as well because they need to be educated as to the use of this so a lot of it is cultural and it is part of the older people who just don't want to see that it is quite good for their youngsters whether they're male or female to work in all industries and not just in the civil service as we find most can do within the United Arab Emirates sorry for the long answer no that's it that's very encouraging in fact Dijon what I'm looking for moment in the UK where you are based and where your company's business is what is the most contentious contentious policy priority there you think okay I have to say that the UK is about 15% of the group but I'll still try to answer I think it's around things we've discussed because we're having that demographic transition with the extension of life increasing the life expectancy growing ageing population and kind of shrinking base to finance that and yes there is a notion that people can work longer but as we say in the UK it's a work till you drop but you know it's not a good formula there are life accidents and people cannot work until 80 so that has limitations there is also the idea that people are going to have to reduce their expectations and the pensions themselves will go down which I think is unavoidable but even the combination of those two things is not enough to deal with the issue so I think whatever you say you're brought back to this issue of migration and correcting that imbalance through the import of a large number of people I think actually the UK probably the most advanced among the developed countries in that respect is the US but it's very followed by the UK which is relatively open and has imported a lot of people from Poland over the last seven, eight years which frankly helps but clearly needs to do more now it's not a popular message but I think it's a message that the political leaders are going to have to emphasize more and more Mario but Italy has a shrinking population an aging and shrinking population so and Venice is sinking right what is the policy priority the contentious policy priority on demographics me maybe I have a story to tell just to support this conversation and I am an entrepreneur and I realized a company in Italy in very very short times in 15 years and now my company produces shoes and is the larger company in Italy and is the second in the world classification lifestyle category at the base that we invest a lot in the human resource in younger generation and the senior together I remember when I start 15 years ago we introduced five people after 15 years later in our company were 30,000 employees and we take it together to work to the younger generation we organize the we invest in the culture we introduce the school a moment we have four school private school the technician school manager school top manager school etc and we trained inside these people these employees that came and in the hand that they utilize the experience for the senior because in my sector the senior is very indispensable because the fashion you understand the fashion is fresh but you need the experience this and in the European and Italian economy I believe that this way is necessary here now we are in Asia we are in China the economy situation GDP is totally different but me now I I talk about my experience because the world is not only China the world is Europe is America and I believe okay in the future I confirm what is you is the the politic the new politic is the new industrialist to invest not in the manufacture but in the brain thank you Timothy contentious policy actions in Hong Kong and in China I think we have to consider to adopt an elderly friendly policy elderly friendly it means inclusion it means no matter you produce your product you consider the need of the old people and never think that old people like the dark color the gray color they are energetic they also like the bright one so I think when we think about them so-called silver market and you have to really ask what the old people want and not only from your manufacturing perspective and furthermore we also have to tackle the ageism the issue on ageism ageism means you are not giving the we are not asking for the top party or party that other than young people should wait but we ask for eco treatment and the ageism means that we have to have some so-called ordinance or some strict requirement that when you recruit employees you should also open the recruitment for old people that they can compete together so I think all this can be a very important policy that a government like Hong Kong, China and different parts of the world to adopt to make sure that our old people are our asset but not our liability thank you finally you just realized how stateless I am probably a typical example of a international migrant worker but let me if you allow take two gauges on this one for Europe because I do work a lot on Europe and on these issues and just to say emphasize the importance of political leadership on this the European politicians in and around this whole question of labor migration and the way that that potentially would come in and into this addressing the demographic implications to the labor markets basically backing down and really we need political leadership and it's not an easy easy call to make because think about it in this sense that you're an aspiring politician to be elected and now you want to have put together a dream ticket for addressing the issue you're basically going to tell your potential electorate four things reduce or shrink the economy work harder retire later and bring in more foreigners those are the four areas of answers and it requires really a very very courageous and a visionary politician in order to in order to break through that but we need it the other gauge that I'd Victor that I'd like to just give on this because I've been working with in the developing world on this as well and we increasingly are faced with migration related limitations which are hampering or rendering foreign direct investment ventures ineffective because they go in into the country the government expects nationals to be employed which I find is a good objective but slamming on quotas for that will only delay the actual effectiveness of those investments and we've seen this in many countries thank you I couldn't think of a better closing remark than the one you have just made so I will refrain from my option to try to summarize where I think the core of the issue is going forward I think we owe a great thanks to to the insights provided by the panel and for you to come to this session thank you all very much have a good afternoon thank you