Economists: Financial mayhem produces significant lessons to learn 

(MENAFN - Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Several economists stressed here Sunday that the global financial crisis had produced a group of significant lessons to learn, mainly how to fend off similar crises in the future.

Addressing a session of the ongoing Kuwait Financial Forum, which kicked off here earlier in the day, Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO) Deputy Chairman Faisal al-Ayar said such lessons mainly included the necessity that a company's expansion plan should be built on purely economic basics.

The state should also intervene through its sovereign fund to buy assets which many companies may not liquidate, he said.

He called for creating a bond market as an equivalent to the stock market, and for encouraging companies and banks to get merged whether at home or abroad.

Another economist, also on the same occasion, criticized improper coordination among Gulf central banks during the global financial meltdown.

Abdullah al-Quweiz of Saudi Arabia said corporate boards of directors should reactivate their role in order to live up to their full responsibilities towards shareholders, investors and customers.

Furthermore, more effective laws ought to be enacted to give supervisory bodies more power, given the fact that the world economic mayhem was partly due to poor oversight, especially in some advanced countries, he blasted.

For his part, Henry Azzam, the CEO of Deutsche Bank - Middle East and North Africa, said there was a consensus that the global financial crisis had been almost over amid forecasts that the negative global economic growth would turn into favorable growth by around 2.5 percent next year.

On oil prices, he predicted that average prices would amount to USD 85 per barrel next year compared to average prices of USD 62 this year and roughly USD 100 last year.

Concerning credit in the region, he suggested that credit would remain limited as banks are still precautionary for providing credit, believing that governmental spending would be the key catalyst for economy in developed and developing nations.

He pointed to the fact the Gulf markets had become more related to world markets than to the performance of their registered firms.

His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah inaugurated the two-day Kuwait Financial Forum earlier in the day.