{"id":3231,"date":"2015-06-09T18:40:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T16:40:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-07-08T17:17:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T15:17:42","slug":"euromoney-conference-2015-speech-of-prof-jassem-ajaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/?p=3231","title":{"rendered":"Euromoney Conference 2015 &#8211; Speech of Prof. Jassem AJAKA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dwVeUt3ZtMw\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"font_9\" dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><span class=\"color_21\">Euro-money Conference &#8211; Finance and Technology: Partners for Growth<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"font_9\" dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><span class=\"color_21\">June 9,2015 \u2013 Four Seasons Hotel &#8211; Beirut<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Professor Jassem Ajaka, Economic Affairs Adviser<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Ministry of Economy and Trade Lebanon<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Excellencies, Honorable Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"color_21\">It gives me great pleasure to be here today at the inaugural Euromoney Lebanon Conference that is supported by the Banque du Liban and the CMA and is entitled: \u201cFinance and Technology: Partners for Growth\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Since 2011, the Lebanese economy has been observing a reversal in the trends that has witnessed up until 2010 whereby the economy back then was relatively stable and witnessed a strong performance in many sectors, particularly in the construction, tourism and banking sectors.<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">This reversal has mainly been the result of the political stalemates at the domestic level and the fact that the Lebanese economy and society withstood the hosting of an unprecedented number of displaced Syrians, whose number exceeded 1.5 Million people, accounting for more than 40% of the Lebanese population.<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">This unexpected situation has resulted in a weakening in the social, economic and security situation, which in turn, has led to a:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"font_9\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"font_9\" style=\"font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"color_21\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\">Discouragement in tourism and private investment as well as a weakening in trade<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"font_9\" style=\"font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"color_21\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\">Rise in the rates of unemployment that are expected to exceed 25% of the total population and in the levels of poverty<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"font_9\" style=\"font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"color_21\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\">Deterioration in external imbalances and public finances, as the rising demand for public services (such as water, energy, health, education, waste management etc.) exerts pressure on government spending.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Our economy has become a transfer economy and we need to take the right steps to change its structure. This will require placing a strategic plan with \u201cknowledge economy\u201d as its core and use technology as a vehicle, for it is inevitable that without research, growth cannot be induced in the world economies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">At the macro level, the policy and regulatory frameworks are essential to the performance of a sector. In fact, decisions of global buyers to source or invest in certain sectors depend on the political and macro-economic stability. <\/span><span class=\"color_21\">This encompasses a large number of areas: monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies, education, skills and labor market policies, investments in health, safety, and especially the rights of property.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">The prevalent political instability in the country has led to a lack of investor confidence and as such, to a lack of investments in the country as a whole.<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">Looking further into Lebanon\u2019s case, we are convinced that the important role that financial services play combined with technology, will allow the creation of a value chain which is defined as the full range of activities and combinations of production factors that businesses go through to bring a product or service from conception to delivery.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"color_21\">The significance of the value chain is that it separates useful activities which allow the sector as a whole to gain competitive advantage, from the wasteful activities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Focusing on the value-creating activities could give the sector many advantages. Hence, these combinations that we should focus on will allow Lebanon to transform regionally into a hub of financial services as we all know that Lebanon is known for its excellent banking and financial operations that help to rationalize and regulate the production processes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Moreover, with the new era of gas in Lebanon, we see the need to create and develop financial instruments on the Beirut stock exchange related to buying and selling futures and forward with gas as underlying. This in turn requires a new engineering in the financial domain and no better tool and vehicle for this than technology!<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">Honorable Guests,<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">Technology is the core to the success of every business and especially to the success of SMEs nowadays. The IT sector in Lebanon specifically is a fast growing sector with a market size expected to reach 570 million US Dollars in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">The sector is mostly dominated by small and medium size businesses which are mostly engaged in the development of software products and mobile applications.<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">Today, there are more than 300 companies involved in ICT related activities which proves that Lebanon is emerging as a leading exporter of software products and services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">This gives us the incentive to further enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the levels of quality and innovation present in the Lebanese IT products to trigger considerable investments in the development of the ICT infrastructure in Lebanon.<\/span><span class=\"color_21\">Moreover, these investments will also allow for more employment in the sector knowing that the ICT sector currently employs more than 7,000 highly skilled and multilingual individuals; and to further support the development of the country\u2019s knowledge economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Nevertheless, all of this cannot be done without providing the appropriate financial support to this new wave of innovative SMEs and start-ups. This support will be able to create more and more investments that in turn will generate wealth and result in growth, with technology playing a big and a very important role in leveraging this growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">This is a further reason why finance and technology go hand in hand for a better business and hence a better business environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">The Lebanese banking sector has proven to be one of the strongest and the most resilient sectors in Lebanon. And we owe all this to the vision of the Governor H.E. Riad Salameh who has been able to render the banking sector one of the most profitable, highly liquid and well-capitalized in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Taking everything into consideration, with the current situation, this is not enough. Banks should be able to further finance the economy especially through financing sectors that are technology-based because: Yes, Finance and Technology are the drivers for growth and enhancing the relation between them would allow for a more solid and active economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Lebanon\u2019s opportunities are many given its strategic geographical location and its open business culture which allow it to have an easy access to the expanding regional markets and moreover allows investments in Lebanon to cater to a growing regional market of more than hundred million consumers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Once again, I would like to express my pleasure to be here at this conference and I am looking forward to the recommendations and results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"color_21\">Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Jassem Ajaka, the Economic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Economy and Trade, gives a keynote at the first Euromoney Lebanon Conference.<br \/>\nEuromoney Lebanon Conference 09 Jun 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":11384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[101,368,150,100,157,307,774],"class_list":["post-3231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-51","tag-101","tag-4-d2","tag-8-d2","tag-100","tag-157","tag-moet","tag-774"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Euromoney2015.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paTyQg-Q7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3231"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11383,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions\/11383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jassemajaka.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}