Finance and economy ministers and central bankers from the Arab states in the Gulf met for emergency talks on Saturday to forge a common front to battle the global economic crisis. The policymakers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met behind closed doors in Saudi Arabia to examine the impact of the crisis on their economies, Qatari Finance Minister Yussef Hussein Kamal said. They will discuss « mechanisms of coordination and cooperation between GCC countries aimed at protecting their economies from the fallout of the world financial crisis, » GCC Secretary General Abdulrahman al-Attiyah said. Stock markets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken a severe battering this month, losing some 200 billion dollars. Fears of a liquidity shortfall have also loomed over Gulf banks because of the global credit crunch, with the banks having limited ability to borrow on the international debt market. Saturday’s gathering in Riyadh came as the Saudi stock market, the largest in the Arab world, opened trading with a sharp drop of more than nine percent to its lowest point in four years. It also comes after OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, announced on Friday that it will slash oil output by 1.5 million barrels a day from November 1. The talks are also taking place three weeks before the United States hosts an unprecedented summit of the world’s richest nations and emerging economies to discuss the global financial crisis. Saudi King Abdullah will be the only Arab leader to attend the November 15 summit in Washington. khaleejtimes.com
UAE Economy Minister Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri said the UAE has one of the regions’ most competitive economies in terms of attracting foreign investments. The UAE ranks 31st globally in Davos Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) for 2008-2009, issued by Davos World Economic Forum and first in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region. He added that the country ranks first on the Arab World Competitiveness Index as well as 23rd globally on the Davos Business Competitiveness Index (BCI) for 2008. Al Mansouri made his remarks at the 24th meeting of the OIC Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Co-operation. He led the UAE delegation to the meeting, which was concluded in Istanbul yesterday. « The UAE also ranked 3rd on AT Kearney FDI Confidence Index for 2007 », he remarked. All these ranks, added Al Mansouri, are true demonstration of the robust current and future FDI flow into the UAE, adding that the country’s GDP rose to $198 billion (Dh727bn) in 2007 posting growth rate of 16.7 per cent where the share of non-oil sectors reached 16.5 per cent ($122 billion) in 2007. The surplus reached $48 billion. The UAE’s total exports reached $180bn in 2007 where crude oil exports accounted for only 39.4 per cent. He further added that FDI in the UAE economy grew by 11 per cent in 2006 to reach $18.7bn compared with $16.6bn in 2005, according to Ministry’s figures, thanks to the country’s investment and economic open and attractive policies and the geographical and strategic location. Al Mansouri stressed the need for promoting stronger economic partnerships among OIC’s member countries to further increase trade and combat poverty and disease as well as to strengthen the economic development in the less developed countries, in Africa in particualr. He also stressed the need for making joint Islamic projects as a strategic goal and an effective step towards economic integration among OIC member countries. He called all investors to tap opportunities in all the OIC member countries to « provide a social and political safety valve for OIC countries and the whole Islamic World ». He further called for a clear realistic and strategic vision for Islamic cooperation and foreign investments. By WAM
Emirates airline will become the first carrier to link the Middle East and the US West Coast when it launches a non-stop service tomorrow to Los Angeles, the second-largest US city. The journey from Dubai to “Tinseltown”, some 13,420km, will take 16 hours and 35 minutes on a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft. Emirates is offering 266 seats in a three-class configuration, with 10 tonnes of freight capacity. Emirates’s fourth US destination, to San Francisco, will launch on Dec 15. In the process, Emirates’s new routes to California may help to reshape the global airline connectivity map, in which travel between the US and West Asia has until now been heavily dependent on transiting through Europe. “This new route is a very important growth market for Emirates,” said Richard Aboulafia, an airline analyst with the Teal Group, based in the US. “LA is one of the top global business, travel and demographic hubs, and Emirates is particularly good at attracting premium traffic, the most profitable market.” Emirates’s LA flight will be its third into the US, following New York and Houston, and its first to the populous and prosperous US West Coast. Major incentives for linking the two cities are the large communities of Iranian-Americans and Indian-Americans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, two affluent groups that travel often to the Middle East and South Asia to visit friends and relatives. “There is a massive local community of west Asian and Middle Eastern-origin residents on the West Coast, many of them very well educated and affluent,” said Peter Harbison, the managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a consulting firm and think tank based in Sydney. Mr Harbison said Emirates stood to score points with these travellers because of the greater accessibility and a more user-friendly service Emirates offered via its new Terminal Three facilities at Dubai International Airport. The LA service is a coup for Emirates, which beat its rival Qatar Airways, another fast-expanding Gulf airline that is trying to become a major long-haul carrier for East-West traffic. Last year, Akbar al Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways, said opening a route to Los Angeles was a top priority because of the 500,000 Iranian-Americans who would now be able to travel back to Iran via the Gulf. The new service may also worry British Airways, which boasts some of the most extensive connections to the US of any foreign carrier. “Dubai’s plan is to become the hub that links the world’s biggest aviation market, North America, with its fastest-growing, Asia. And this link would bypass Europe altogether,” Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways (BA), warned in a recent letter to the editor of a British newspaper. As he lobbied for expanding Heathrow airport, Mr Walsh said BA was directly threatened by Emirates’s growth. “The hugely expanded Emirates will be scooping up Heathrow’s and the UK’s business. With shrivelling connectivity, London’s position as a global business capital will slump at the same rate,” he said. At the same time, US carriers have also been eager to bypass Europe and connect the US with the fast-growing Gulf region. As Emirates’s inaugural flight to LA flies over the Atlantic, United Airlines will be launching its inaugural flight to Dubai from its hub in Washington DC. The new route follows Delta Air Lines’s service to Dubai from its base in Atlanta, which began last year. Mr Harbison said opening new markets could often create transformative and profound changes to the air travel industry. “As we have seen over and over again, when new aerial highways are created, whole new markets open up – either because of lower prices or because of the greater convenience,” he said. If so, the stimulus will help to buoy flagging Middle East air traffic figures, which fell 2.8 per cent last month, the first monthly decline in four years, according to the International Air Transport Association. The new route comes amid ongoing aircraft availability concerns for Emirates and other Gulf airlines, which have some of the world’s largest order books for new wide-bodied aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. Due to the two-month-long labour strike at Boeing, as well as problems with one of Boeing’s key galley suppliers, Emirates was forced to delay the Los Angeles launch from September until tomorrow. It also scaled back plans to fly to Los Angeles to only three flights per week, from seven days a week, because of a shortage of aircraft due to the strike. thenational.ae
Dubai: Saudi Arabian stocks fell sharply on Saturday, tracking a slump in world markets, as investors worried that an oil price plunge and possible global recession would hit the growth of firms in the world’s top oil exporter. The benchmark of the largest Arab bourse closed 8.7 per cent lower at 5,624 points, a day after bourses around the world plummeted as investors, fearing a long and deep worldwide recession, dumped risky assets. The index has fallen more than 44 per cent so far this year and is the worst-performing measure in the region after Dubai. « The Saudi market is positively correlated with the global markets, especially the big ones, » said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB bank, HSBC’s Saudi affiliate. « As we’ve seen these markets tumble, the Saudi market has tumbled by a higher degree. There is negative sentiment. » Saudi investors were also reacting to the near $4 drop in oil prices on Friday. Six other stock markets in the oil-exporting region were closed on Saturday. Reuters
The sixth Gulf summit for leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states will be held in Jeddah next Sunday, and will be chaired by Kuwait as chairman of the current session of the GCC. Holding the midyear unofficial GCC summit aims to exchange viewpoints and explore latest regional and international developments, to boost coordination and consultation, as well as to unite stands. The summit will be preceded by a meeting of the GCC Ministerial Council, which will include foreign ministers of GCC states, to prepare the agenda to be discussed during the one-day summit. Gulf diplomatic sources told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) in Riyadh, Tuesday, that leaders will explore during the summit major issues that include fighting terrorism, the situation in Iraq, the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, in addition to other Gulf economic and developmental issues. The bombing incidents that occurred in Riyadh and Yanbu will also be discussed, as security of the region is a joint responsibility. The upcoming consultative summit is an opportunity to unite Gulf stands before holding the 16th Arab Summit, scheduled to be held in Tunisia on May 22-23, in particular the importance of reforming the Arab League and finding new mechanisms to develop joint Arab work. kuwaitbusiness.net
Qatar is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and the wealthiest country in the world measured by GDP per capita. The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) lies at the heart of this small but dynamic country’s ambitious investment and development strategy.
