GCC leaders to discuss new biz strategies at top CEO meet

Sunaina Rana / Emirates Business

Exchanging views about the effects of diversification and disruption of technology, business leaders in the GCC will come together on a platform at the Top CEO conference on April 5.
Trend Magazine and I INSEAD – the leading international business school, would also be recognizing the Arabian Gulf region’s leaders for their commendable contribution in their field. The event would be setting a benchmark for business award functions in the region by honoring only the leaders from publicly listed companies only.
Julien Hawari, Co-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mediaquest Corp, while talking to Emirates Business mentioned, “The factors that the Top CEO Conference is putting forward include technology disrupting the way business is done. This is already visible in the transport and retail, with new players facing emergences that did not exist in the region four years ago. The B2B and B2C digital spheres are growing, albeit at a slower pace. Some businesses have integrated Cloud computing into their business structures, but a lot needs to be done in the sphere of data management.”
“Also, there is a huge gap between the right sets of job skills in the technological field and the market demand,” he added.
The GCC countries had witnessed allot of disruption in business due to the technology, also the cybersecurity and the digital element pose huge risks for the GCC economies. Therefore, Top CEO brings the regional and International market gurus under one roof to discuss the most persistent issues, faced by the region at present. In addition to that the next major concern of the region would also discussed leading to finding answers to these issues like Economic Diversification, When Tech Kills Your Business and Cybersecurity for economic betterment.
Concerns directing towards Economic Diversification due to the unstable oil industry there is a dire need in the region to cut back the contribution of oil revenues to the GDPs of GCC countries. “The debate in this region on moving away from oil has been going on for some time. When the oil prices were hovering around $100 per barrel, there was not much incentive for regional economies to look for revenues from other sources.”
“The diversification drive is led by Saudi Arabia with several privatisation initiatives, the introduction of VAT and cutting back of oil subsidies. One of the panel sessions at the Top CEO Conference will be on VAT and its impact in the region. Another will be the economic diversification drive in the region,” he added, “The policymakers have taken all the right steps toward diversification and, hopefully, we’ll start seeing the results of such efforts from Q1 2017 onwards.”