Jordan Times
Friday, January 23, 2004
King to present Arab vision for prosperity, security
Marking his fourth participation in the forum, on Friday the King will deliver a keynote address that presents the Arab vision for achieving prosperity and security in the Middle East. He will also brief the audience on the Kingdom's achievements on the socio-economic and political levels and elaborate on efforts to upgrade the standards of living for Jordanians.
The King is also scheduled to meet top business executives to highlight the legislative, economic and administrative reforms.
The King's schedule on Friday start with a morning meeting with members of the ABC, which was formed during WEF's global reconciliation summit at the Dead Sea. The ABC was formed by 50 Middle East leading businessmen to enhance cooperation within Arab corporate sector and promote competitiveness to prepare the sector for full integration with the global economy. The new body is expected to address economic challenges via cooperation with governments and other parties. In his meetings with ABC members, the King has called on the private sector in the Arab world to assume a bigger and a more active role in the development of Arab society to help them overcome economic obstacles facing them. He stressed the need for the private and public sectors to join ranks to ensure the achievement of real development, underlining the importance of developing human resources as a pillar in the process.
Other meetings on the agenda include a lunch with governors for travel and tourism, afternoon meetings with governors of the health, IT and automotive sectors. In each meeting, Jordanian businessmen from each sector would address the special governors and portray current accomplishments and future plans. The meetings are regarded as very important, because they allow for greater foreign investments.
A special session on Jordan's Education Initiative will also be attended by the King. The initiative, endorsed in Davos last year, was officially launched at the Dead Sea forum in June. A group of global high-tech giants in cooperation with the government launched the initiative that projects transforming 100 "discovery schools" into model facilities where technology is at the service of learning and teaching and IT is perfectly integrated in education. The project will be applied to Jordan's 3,000 schools. Companies who have committed to participate in the project include CISCO Systems, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Siemens and Sun Microsystems, among others. The strategic partnership between WEF members and the government will help modernise curricula and teaching methods through putting more emphasis on critical skills, innovative thinking, self-discovery and self-determination.