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Thursday March 28, 2024

Davos Economic Summit: PM skipping ‘annual pilgrimage’ of private-public partnership

By Tariq Butt
January 19, 2019

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has decided to skip the Global Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum (WEF), opening in Davos (Switzerland) on Jan 22.

“The prime minister is not attending the Davos event,” his Special Assistant on Media, Iftikhar Durrani, confirmed to The News while answering a question. He did not cite any reason when asked about it. No key minister of the Imran Khan cabinet is showing up in the WEF mega-event. This would be a rare event that there would be no senior level representation from Pakistan at this summit. The prime minister visits Qatar on Jan 21-22.

Once, Nawaz Sharif as prime minister had missed this event in 2015 due to energy crises in Pakistan. But during all of his three tenures, he always paid special attention to this gathering of global leaders from governments, businesses and civil society.

Benazir Bhutto and Shaukat Aziz as premiers had also accorded special emphasis to the Davos Summit and participated with a lot of preparation. Last year, Shahid Khanqan Abbasi as prime minister used Davos as an opportunity to make his global presence and spent three hectic days, meeting scores of world and business leaders, and showcased the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Before Abbasi went to Davos last year, Ali Jehangir Siddiqui, who was later appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, had done comprehensive work for his visit. In Davo, he had arranged all the key sessions of Abbasi with business leaders.

The Davos Global Economic Summit organized every winter since 1971 is the largest gathering of world leaders belonging to governments, businesses, civil society and media. Every summit, regarded as the “annual pilgrimage” of private public partnership, has a distinctive thematic focus and yearlong preparations are done for it.

The theme of next week’s summit is Globalization 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It picks up on two major trends: One is a fraught time for global cooperation, as legitimate frustration over the failure of globalization to consistently raise living standards spills over into populism and nationalism. Two is a whole new wave of change in the form of the high-tech digital revolution. With climate change posing an existential threat to the world’s common future, the need to figure out better ways to make the global economy work and fast. In the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution, the effort will be to make sure that global governance structures, and the way countries corporate corresponds to the needs of the society living in the fourth industrial revolution.

The themes will be explored in over 600 sessions. This year’s global summit programme focusses on six critical dialogues: geopolitics in a multi-conceptual world, the future of the economy, industry systems and technology policy, risk resilience to promote systems thinking, human capital and society, and global institutional reform. Country delegations participate in these intense dialogues after a year round preparation and take this as a unique opportunity to debate, and discuss challenges facing different sectors of society and economy.

According to WEF founder chairman Prof Schwab, key objective of annual summit of global leaders is to analyze the state of the World and shape an agenda for the future. “The event has five unique characteristics; it is multi-stakeholder, multidisciplinary, forward multi-national global, forward-oriented and purpose-oriented. It is designed set the global pulse on issues facing the world. The summit is the most comprehensive multi-stakeholder summit in the world.”

There will be 3,200 participants, half from global businesses, which include 1,000 CEOs of global corporations, other half will be representatives from 130 governments, heads of all international organisations, all key NGOs in the world, including many social entrepreneurs and media and cultural leaders. From January 22-25, they will discuss how to build a better version of globalisation.

This year more than 70 heads of states and governments and 333 cabinet level representatives from 100 countries will participate in the summit.

A former diplomat who specialises in economic diplomacy expressed surprise at the official approach to global economic diplomacy. He said no country can live in cocoon as it is global world. “For newly elected world leaders, Davos is a God-gifted opportunity to introduce their vision of governance, build partnerships, showcase their governments’ policies, and attract foreign investment and build personal rapport with global political and business leaders.”

The key political leaders participating in 2019 summit are: the President of the Swiss Confederation, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Spanish Prime Minister, Iraqi President Barham Salih, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Federal Chancellor of Austria Ivan Duque, President of Colombia , Prime Minster of Ethiopia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Libyan Prime Minister, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of Norway, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, President of Peru, President of Rwanda; Prime Minister of South Africa, President of Uganda, Prime Minister of Vietnam and President of Zimbabwe.

Nine heads of governments from Middle East, seven presidents from Africa, 37 heads of states and governments from Europe and Eurasia, and six heads of governments from Latin America will also attend the event. Besides, foreign, finance, economy and trade ministers from 130 countries will be there. The US secretaries of state, treasury, commerce and trade will represent America while President Donald Trump is not participating in the summit.

Leaders of the major international organisations like UN Secretary-General, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Executive Secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Chief Executive Officer of World Bank, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Director-General of World Trade Organisation, Secretary-General of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Monetary Fund Managing Director and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Secretary General will also participate.

Bill Gates, Prince William of Britain and David Attenborough will also address key sessions of the summit.