The following is the translated text of Sheikh Mohammed's keynote address at the second Dubai Strategy Forum.
Welcome to the United Arab Emirates and to Dubai Strategy Forum. I hope this forum will provide you with the chance to discuss, debate and deliberate on the region's issues and aspirations.
Esteemed guests, our region is confronted by many challenges, the most important of which, I strongly believe, is achieving comprehensive development. No issue is more important than this. Successful development opens the doors to success in other areas. We in the UAE, led by President H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, may Allah protect him, and H.H. Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, believe in the importance of comprehensive development. We in the UAE have achieved great objectives. These objectives could not have been achieved without tireless hard work and the ability to ignore anything that detracted from our work.
Our esteemed guests, you acknowledge that the Third World's economy is falling behind the world's economy and, when we compare the total GDP of the countries in this region with that of Germany or Japan, for instance, we discover that the GDP is approximately equal to that of Germany and half that of Japan, which means that the output of 1,800 million people is equivalent to that of 83 million people in Germany or 126 million Japanese. From this, we can conclude that there is a problem with performance and that development and economic policies need to be reviewed. Allow me to pause for a moment to define the region I am talking about and to describe what its countries and peoples have in common. I am talking about the area extending from the Indian subcontinent in the east to North Africa in the west via the Middle East and East Africa. These countries are connected geographically, culturally and historically.
As for the issue of development, you will notice that this region's countries are outside the framework of international economic effectiveness centered in Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. So the Third World countries operate on the margins of the world economy and their contribution to world GDP does not exceed 2% or 3%.
I call on the countries of this region to consider establishing a framework for regional economic cooperation, provided that such a framework forms a significant addition to the existing ones, and that governments are responsible for initiating development and change. Unless governments change their modes of operation and economies are liberated from bureaucracy, corruption will rise again.
Ladies and gentlemen, historically, giant successes and huge projects have begun with a dream that the dreamer succeeded in turning into a vision and a plan. Undoubtedly, you dream that our region will join the train of progress; it is a legitimate project and one that is attainable. We say in our culture, "Whoever consults people shares with them their minds". I say, if we share expertise and experiences, our knowledge will be doubled and our power will increase. If Allah is willing, Dubai Strategy Forum will be the proper framework for exchanging knowledge, sharing expertise, building networks of cooperation and creating new competencies that will help us achieve continued growth and progress together.
I wish you good luck and may peace and the blessings of Allah be upon you.
WAM
