Bahrain achieves highest credit rating in spite of global economic crisis
Suad Hamada (Bahrain Roundup) / 26 June 2012
The International Islamic Rating Agency (IIRA) has issued a statement on Bahrain’s economic rating and has affirmed that the Kingdom has achieved its highest long-term rating with the lowest credit risk.
The statement assigned Bahrain with a rating of “A-” on both the foreign and local currency scales and has also assigned a short-term rating of a “A-2” on both. On a national scale, the IIRA has assessed Bahrain’s ratings at “AAA/A-1”. The statement went on to note “Bahrain’s economy has remained resilient during the global financial crisis in 2008 and has posted positive real GDP growth throughout this period.
” Barring any unexpected political or economic developments, the country is anticipated to grow at an improved pace in 2012, it said.
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University College of Business launched
Dr Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University College of Business (TAGUCB), has announced the launching of the state-of the-art college that will offer undergraduate business programmes in international accounting, management, and logistics . The classes will start in September 2012. The programmes accredited by the Higher Education Council in Bahrain will lead to granting the degree of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
“We are looking forward to providing high quality education to the students in the Gulf region. We expect our students to benefit from our state-of-the-art programmes that will allow them to contribute to the economic development of the region” said Dr Abu-Ghazaleh.
The curriculum was developed by a group of international advisors in line with the highest international standards.
Tamkeen and BDB enterprise finance scheme serves over 1,000 start-ups
Tamkeen and Bahrain Development Bank’s Enterprise Finance Scheme recently reached a significant milestone, having served more than 1000 “start-up” enterprises since its inception, with total portfolio amounting to BD 17.8 million.
The beneficiary enterprises represent a broad cross-section of sectors and industries within Bahrain, with the majority coming from the trading, services, restaurants and coffee shops, foods and packaging, and education.
About a third of the beneficiaries were businesswomen.
GOP to improve seafarers’ welfare
The General Organisation of Sea Ports (GOP) has reinforced its commitment to seafarers’ and the maritime community by recognising their unique contribution to the Kingdom’s maritime industry.
As an advocate to upholding the rights and privileges of seafarers, the GOP has undertaken several initiatives over the past years to promote the welfare of the seafarers and to make shipping a better and safer industry.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has officially announced June 25 as the international ‘Day of the Seafarer’ and this year’s theme focuses on paying tribute to the enormous contribution of more than 1.5 million seafarer the world via social media.
Hassan Ali Al Majed, the Director General of GOP said: “The ‘Day of the Seafarer’ is a very important day for all of us here and we would like to recognise the indispensible services our seafarers provide, which positively impact each of our lives on a daily basis. We would like to encourage people to participate in the IMO’s initiative, which is aimed at vocalising that recognition and appreciation through social media.”
Over the past two years, the GOP has been actively involved in communicating with stakeholders through social media as it has successfully engaged the public via the dedicated “Bahrain Maritime Festival” Facebook page and Twitter feed, @BMFBahrain.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2012/June/middleeast_June315.xml§ion=middleeast&col
26 6月 2012
An interview with Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh published in Qatar Tribune
Arab youth must be knowledge creators, says Abu-Ghazaleh
LANI ROSE R DIZON
DOHA DUBBED as an Arab accounting expert, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman and founder of the international Jordan-based organisation Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organisation (TAG-Org) is a strong promoter of Intellectual Property in the Arab region. In 2009, he was appointed by the UN as Chair of the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Recently, he was also appointed as an expert in the team of WTO multi-stakeholders consultation.
Abu-Ghazaleh was in Doha to attend the Doha Forum which concluded recently.
In an interview with Qatar Tribune, he discussed the Arab Spring, MDGs and the power of internet to shape the world, and praised the role of Qatar in organising international events, and as an independent actor with dynamic and distinct foreign policy.
Speaking about the Arab Spring, he said, “I do not call what is happening in the Arab world as ‘spring’. Rather, I see it as renaissance. I have predicted long time ago what is now happening in the Arab world and that it would spread beyond the region because the world is overlooking the social effects of globalisation.
Governments across the world should face a young generation with aspirations for freedom and desire to get jobs. The youth is questioning the process of globalisation and its impacts on the society.” According to Abu-Ghazaleh, the Millennium development objectives have so far failed to make any progress in developing countries. “ “The MDGs, as they are currently conceived, address the symptoms of poverty and underdevelopment, but mostly ignore the deeper causes. Instead of only vowing to support humanitarian objectives and putting money to eradicate poverty, the rich countries must recognise the urgency of removing those obstacles to development which they have the power to address. Each year, for example, developing countries miss out on $124bn in revenue from offshore assets held in tax havens. By not closing down such tax havens, we actively encourage corrupt elites in these countries to continue cheating their populations,” Abu-Ghazaleh said.
“Moreover, the current system of international trade is deeply inequitable. It exposes developing countries to unfair competition, and discourages diversification of their economies. These countries face a burden of foreign debt — estimated at $500bn for poor countries — that is simply incompatible with the pursuit of development goals. Addressing these issues is vital for development objectives to have any chance to succeed. Yet, although ‘goal eight’ is to achieve a global partnership for development, and although some progress has been made on the debt issue, too little has been done to give this initiative a concrete meaning,” Abu-Ghazaleh said.
“The world’s one billion hungry people do not deserve charity. They have a human right to adequate food, and governments have corresponding duties, which are enshrined in international human rights law. Governments that are serious about making progress on development objectives should be asked to adopt a legislative framework for the realisation of economic and social rights, such as the right to food or the right to health care. We need a new declaration of MDGs for the knowledge age whereby ICT is used as an enabler for achieving these objectives. Before that we need to confess that we have failed because the best way to solve a problem is admit the failure. The world actually underestimates the impact of information technology on development and achievement of MDGs,” added Abu-Ghazaleh.
On the growing influence of knowledge ‘industries’, he said, “We had passed through the information era when information technology was born to establish the basic infrastructure. The world eventually moved to the knowledge age where this information is now used to create knowledge and accumulate wealth. As one can observe, the wealthiest organisations now are the knowledge organisations including Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft.
These organisations are taking over the leadership from the old giant industries of cars, oil, banking and steel. So, the future is in the knowledge ‘industries’.” “The third stage which is much more important and the world are not there yet is the wisdom age. At this stage, knowledge is created for the benefit of humanity at large and unfortunately we are far from this stage. I think this stage would be triggered only when the world faces a big crisis and reminds us that anything invented should target the human being and not just for the sake of making wealth or anything else,” he added.
Advising the Arab youth, he encouraged them to be “knowledge creators”.
“I think the way to make the Arab world a better society is the business of the youth and my advice to the youth if they aspire to real democracy is to resort to the internet because it is the only place where there is really democracy. I think Arab youth should be much more aware of their heritage and get inspiration from their ancestors who invented many valuable things for the humanity and laid the foundation of knowledge for human civilization,” Abu-Ghazaleh concluded.
http://www.qatar-tribune.com/data/20120527/content.asp?section=Nation4_5
27 5月 2012