The Banking Executive Magazine - August Issue 2022

Synergy, Cooperation and Strategic Alliance... The Pillars of Success startup innovators, “Josour” initiative with Escwa & the Union of Arab Banks for job opportunities, “Living Independently” initiative that is launched to guide Arab innovators to serve millions of disabled people of determination, in addition to the partnerships established to promote CSR. Finally, I would like to say that the greatest support for Arab countries, or indeed for any country committed to reform, will not come from gov- ernments or international institutions, but--when the conditions are right-- from the vast resources of the private sector, both domestic and foreign. 6. WE HAVE WITNESSED AN INCREASE IN ACTIVITY BETWEEN UAC AND LATIN AMERICA, MAY YOU PLEASE ELABORATE ON THE MATTER (PERSPECTIVES, PLANS AND BENEFITS)? Latin America is considered one of our main destinations because actu- ally one of the main obstacles facing growth and the development is the reliance on one destination and sec- tor. Countries have major trading partners, which are the traditional trading partners, but there are many other potential trading partners. Also there are major trading sectors, and there are other potential trading sec- tors. Latin America is one of the important destinations, because Latin America led by Brazil specifically considered a very strong economies size-wise, have a lot of products needed by the Arab region, and the opposite is cor- rect. But this is not the story; the story is the strategic alliance due to the similarities in economic conditions. There we started discussing the topic of initiating economic zones in both sides, and we started to talk about Maritime linkages and Logistics link- ages. So Latin America is a good potential for us, which was ignored to a great extent in the vision of economic de- cision-makers. 7. AWAY FROM CLIMATE CHANGE, DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BLOCKCHAIN, HOW CAN ARAB COUNTRIES MITIGATE THE REPERCUSSIONS OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN CONFLICT ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FOOD SECURITY? Shortening, the is geographic dis- tance coming a little bit towards Eu- rope, you have functions in the questions on the answer to which you sent us some aspects regarding the digital transformation and stuff like this but regarding the Ukrainian Constitution Part of the story is our orientation to- wards Latin America, which hap- pened, of course, before the War between Ukraine and Russia. This shows our vision to diversify by ex- panding to new destinations such as Latin America, China, India and some African countries. The objec- tive is not just to secure food rather stability! That's why we offered sev- eral proposals regarding grain hubs and logistic zones. So we started to talk about grain hubs to be located in different ports in the Arab region and to be linked with other ports in dif- ferent places worldwide. Diversification is the name of the game. The Reliance on one or two, or very few sources is not good. And as I mentioned earlier, the current ge- ographical exposure concentration is the main problem Till now, we were not suffering, even Egypt, is not suffering from the war till now since they have a grain stor- age for the following at least eight month. I believe that's in the near fu- ture thing will be eased, since the blocked grains will be released there- fore increasing supply and reducing prices. But what happened must be consid- ered a lesson and start diversifying as soon as possible, and our role is to keep pressing to achieve that. ISSUE 164 AUGUST 2022 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 23