Abu-Ghazaleh: "The Jordanian Economy Depends on Youths"

AMMAN-------- June 23, 2015 -------- HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org), the global organization for professional services and education,  stressed on the  importance of indulging youths in building strong and dignified communities, pointing out that the Jordanian economy depends primarily on youths.

At the opening of Jubilee School's Youth Economic Forum held under the patronage of Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh and under the theme "Assessment of the Jordanian Economy from the Perspective of the Youth", Abu-Ghazaleh called for mobilizing youths' enormous energy, stating that there is no reason that prevents them from being the Homeland builders, citing many of his life events and the difficult conditions he experienced and how these drove him into excellence and success.

He called the students to seriously consider the field of cognitive innovation, noting that he first heard of the term "Intellectual Property" almost half a century ago, which led him to establish the largest Intellectual Property institution in the world. He embarked on studying Intellectual Property and its competitive market, to find out that only a few competitors existed in the Western world employing lawyers. So he decided to establish the company utilizing information and communications technology in order to excel the world's companies operating in this field.

Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh said that the strength lies in the utilization of information and communications technology, pointing out that Finland, with its resources and population, is almost similar to Jordan, but Jordan's condition is better since winter in Finland lasts for nine months. He added that what made Finland outperform Jordan economically is that the former developed a knowledge-based economy, so Finland's national income hit $180 billion at a time when Jordan's national income remained at $33 billion.

He also highlighted the importance of digital education, approved recently by the government, in schools, and the need of e-government program implementation to protect the Jordanian economy, since such a program is the only one capable of eliminating the financial and administrative corruption in government institutions and departments .

Abu-Ghazaleh also said that in order to transform Jordan into a smart country, it only takes one student to set his/her sights on this goal to transfer Jordan entirely into a smart city, through a knowledge-based invention and information and communications technology, emphasizing that we only need someone like Steve Jobs to come up with an outstanding invention.

On his part, Dr. Yousef Mansour, economic expert and Ro'ya Consulting CEO, presented an assessment of the economic policies of the Jordanian government, indicating that there are no economic reform policies in the country and that Jordan's agreement with the International Monetary Fund in 2012 states that Jordan is granted loans in times of need while ensuring repayment, which is done through imposing taxes upon citizens and raising fuel prices. He pointed out that Jordan takes out loans to pay the salaries of workers and retirees, with no implementation of any development or economic projects.

He noted that one of the strategic mistakes is the government's dependence on one country to import gas, connecting the fate of the entire country to only one country, pointing out that the number of Egyptian gas outages hit 32 times and this is reoccurring in the Gas deal with Israel.

A number of the School students reviewed the goals of the Forum and the mechanism of preparing for it, pointing out that the School holds the Forum annually and that it is organized by the eleventh grade students of the School as a school graduation requirement.