The Arab world never been a partner with the United States or the Western Europe as West and the US are the true partners, an economist said.
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, a global business leader and a visionary, told a select group of journalists that the perception that Arab World ever been a partner with the US or the West was absolutely wrong.
“The Arab region is just exporter of oil and investments to the US and West and nothing beyond it. The true partnership stems through the investments and if you go by statistics 75% investments in the US originates from the Western Europe or vice versa,” Abu-Ghazaleh, said, adding that this equation will continue to maintain the status quo.
Referring to the GCC-US dollar peg, he said that the size of the total GCC economies was too small and if they keep the US dollar peg intact or not doesn’t matter in real terms.
For example, he said, the total size of the daily money market supply in the US is $4 trillion, how the fraction of that which is the GCC economies can matter for US?
“We have to face the realty while living in this part of the world as we see a lot of investments in the Arab world, for example, in the real estate or hospitality sector and that all belongs to the local investors and not to the West or US investors.
The Arab region, he said, should realise its potentials and develop indigenous economic bloc to serve its people and the respective economies in a better way instead looking on other blocs or countries for that matter.
“The human capital is very important as being a progressive country or a nation and Bahrain is blessed with this wealth and efforts should be on achieving excellence in all vital sectors. The focus should be more on education, research and development and human resources development to keep the wheel of the Arab economic moving,” he said.