Positioning the UAE in the Global Economy

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — September 27, 2003

Key UAE government and business decision-makers joined today with leading economic strategists for an invitation-only seminar, Positioning the UAE in the Global Economy, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dubai. The seminar signals the launch of a major collaborative research project to assess and propose strategies to improve the economic competitiveness of the UAE as a whole, as well as each of the Emirates that comprise the Federation.

The seminar was supported by the UAE Offsets Group, the Dubai Development and Investment Authority, and BTU Ventures, Inc., a US-based project developer and private equity investor focused on the energy and energy-related industries, primarily in the Middle East. Sponsor of both the seminar and research project is Strategies for Energy Dependent Economies, Inc. (“SEDE”), a not-for-profit affiliate of BTU Ventures established to perform national competitiveness and cluster development assessments, with the ultimate objective of formulating a framework that is tailored to the needs of energy producing economies. This will be the first such assessment focusing exclusively on the UAE economy.

The meeting was opened by HE Dr. Mohammad Khalfan bin Kharbash, UAE’s Minister Finance & Industry, and featured as its keynote a two-hour presentation by Professor Michael E. Porter, Director of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School and one of the world’s leading authorities on competitive strategy and international competitiveness. Professor Porter described the challenges and opportunities that face the UAE in the current global economic environment, and outlined the vision and objectives of the collaborative research project.

Wael Almazeedi, founder and CEO of project co-sponsor BTU Ventures, underscored the project’s importance: “Only a select number of countries in the world are able to play a larger role in world affairs than their size would signify, with an impact beyond their own borders. The UAE is destined to become the economic engine of the Middle East, creating world-class role models both in business and in government for others in the region to emulate, and providing the Middle East region – and indeed the Islamic world — with an opportunity to become truly a part of the global economy and marketplace.”