Emirates palace

The CE1 class visited the Emirates Palace for the GCC Economic and Financial Integration Forum. We arrived at 9 o’clock and then we registered and then we entered the conference room and listened to the opening speech.

From 9:30 to 11:00 was the first session time chaired by Dr Jassim Al Mannai, Director General of the Arab Monetary Fund, who talked about economic and financial integration and international experience.

Dr. Abdul Aziz Aluwaishig, Director General International Economic Relations GCC Secretariat, was the first speaker. He talked about the history of developments and agreements made in recent time by the GCC countries in their chasing for the freeing up trade and decreasing the tariffs in the GCC zone.

After that the Head of Unit in the European Commission, EU, Lukas Stemitsiotis talked about the challenges they faced and the problem the Euro zone had because of Greece and the possibility a Greek default on its debt; the European countries are damaged by this problem and they are struggling to find a solution for it.

The third and the last speaker of the first session was Dr. Aladdin Rillo, Director Chief Economist of the ASEAN Integration Monitoring Office. ASEAN stands for the Association of South East Asian Nations. Dr.Rillo talked about of the experience of the ASEAN and he mentioned ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement. He also mentioned the goal in his region was integration of capital markets instead of a single currency but the problem they faced was the difficulty for developed countries like Singapore to share the same currency with the undeveloped countries like Laos or Cambodia. Maybe this applies equally to the Euro zone. He was the best of the speakers because he was brief and he gave more details.

At the end, they opened a time for the people who were there to ask questions and give their opinions