Conference Profile and Objectives

The GCC region’s success story has been praised by many countries, organisations, global leaders and influencers around the world. Despite being located in a challenging region, the GCC region has managed to maintain a peaceful society and make an excellence progress in the last half century across the government and business sectors and key indicators – in particular, infrastructure, economic diversification, health and safety, education, women’s empowerment, financial, and leadership development.

Approximately 100 years ago, when the area was sustained by fishing and pearl diving for years, GCC then started looking for an alternative source of income and becoming the leading re-export ports, airports and many other diversified industries.

During the 19th and early 20th century’s, the pearling industry thrived in the relative calm at sea, providing both income and employment to the people of the GCC. It began to become a good economic resource for the local people. The decline of pearling in 1920s and 1930s resulted in a very difficult era, with little opportunity to build any infrastructure.

Before the discovery and export of oil, the economy of the region depended mainly on agriculture, livestock, pearl diving, fishing and seafaring. Therefore, the period before the discovery of oil, reflected the country's limited natural resources, and resulted in a simple subsistence economy but that too declined after THE WORLD started producing artificial pearls. However, the main economic revolution took place in the last century with the first oil explorations in the GCC region.

In early 19th century when oil was discovered in the region, it changed the region beyond recognition and led to GCC becoming the vibrant, modern, business-centred region. Massive oil revenues enabled GCC to short-cut the usually difficult and lengthy process of saving and capital accumulation necessary for economic development. Given an abundance of natural resource endowments (oil and gas), the GCC region had embraced resource-based industries (RBI) as a development strategy, an industrial strategy that is based on utilization of natural resources. There had been a deployment of windfall income, largely directed at a ‘once-and-for-all’ boost to the social and economic infrastructure, which enabled the region to achieve a significant degree of economic development within the very brief timeframe.

In common with other developing countries, the GCC region, whose economy has been significantly dependent on the export of one primary product, namely oil, pursued a strategy of industrialization to diversify the sources of its regional income and reduce its dependence on oil. The main factors which have acted as a constraint on GCC industrial development are limited raw materials, and the size of the domestic market. On the other hand, the abundance of natural mineral resources, the ready availability of financial capital, a well-established infrastructure, flexible labour and employment policy, availability of cheap energy, industrial zones and various incentives in legislation, plus political and social stability have been the main resource and incentive for GCC industrialization.

The successful implementation of human development policy in the region, hand in hand with industrialization, urbanization and modernization, is one of the rare examples of a region which has successfully used income from its huge natural resources for its long-term development over a very short period (from the early 1970s to late 1990s). It is clear that GCC has achieved impressive improvements in many social and economic development indicators in three decades.

The GCC Economy has proven to be among the strongest and the most promising economies globally. GCC economy has maintained high growth rates in the past few years confirming its strength through a very challenging period. While many economies worldwide slumped in the years following the global financial crisis of 2008, the region’s economy continued to follow a positive growth trajectory. The current fall in oil prices poses a great challenge to all oil exporting countries and the GCC region was no exception. However, the regional economy once again proven its resilience with the wise leadership’s efforts to diversify the economy and reduce its dependence on oil in line with the regional agenda, the contribution of non-oil sectors to the regional economy has reached 69%, leaving only 29% to the oil sector.

The successes we are witnessing are the result of a number of integrating factors - political stability, security, advanced infrastructure, and an enabling legislative environment. All these factors have made the region a desired destination for businesses and helped GCC build the largest economy in the Arab world achieving truly remarkable growth rates.

GCC region has achieved outstanding accomplishments based on numerous globally accepted economic indicators, proving its leadership in the Arab World and has created a pro-business environment that contributes to achieve balanced and sustainable development of the region, through the enactment and modernization of economic legislations, foreign trade policies, development of industries and exports, promotion of investment, regulation of competition and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector, protection of consumer and intellectual property rights, and diversification of economic activities, under the leadership of efficient nationals, in line with international standards of creativity, excellence and knowledge economies.

The occasion is a proud moment. Within the 5 decades, the region has managed to pull through the economic crisis, decrease its dependence on oil revenues, double its GDP and continue to develop. Thanks to the region’s visionary leadership, what the region has accomplished in the last five decades is truly extraordinary.

After all, above said story, we must congratulate and thanks those visionaries who have built a modern region out of a scratch, thanks to the leadership who displayed limitless determination to continue building the region, to pass it to the next generation intact to continue the success of the forefathers.  We must also congratulate all the institutions who have kept the first block of the business organizations and shouldered their responsibilities towards the region, for their intelligent outlook for the future in adopting excellence, leadership and planning to address the current challenges by finding solutions that fit the nature of our society and its lifestyle, and for launching diverse initiatives with the aim of promoting the values of social solidarity and cohesion.

On this great occasion, Datamatix presents the 'GCC Government and Business Organizations Golden Jubilee Conference' which aims to highlight what the region has accomplished in the last five decades and aspires to celebrate 50 years of giving, development, partnership and leadership. Celebrating 50-years anniversary of government and business organizations history and achievements to date, the event celebrates 50+ years of doing business in the region providing solutions and guidance that have supported the GCC region’s transformation into one of the world’s most progressive region.

Building on GCC’s status as a global hub for the future industry, the event provides a platform for attendees to exchange knowledge, expertise, best practices and success stories in order to develop proactive solutions to the challenges in the near, medium and long term thereby strengthening GCC region’s position as a global hub for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and to increase its contribution to the regional economy by means of advancing innovation and future technologies.

The event not only marks the golden jubilee of the GCC government and business organizations but will also reflect on their role as a leading business facilitators and contributors to the regions’ remarkable growth whilst showcasing the five decades of offering excellent services to the local and global business community while promoting the organizations as leading supporters of the region’s vibrant business environment.

The event provides an unprecedented platform for knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer engagement as well as a central platform for the interchange of best cases and exceptional thinking whilst providing exciting opportunity to all regional and global industry professionals to partner with the business organization in the GCC region.

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