UAE Participates In 27th Meeting Of GCC Ministerial Committee For Planning And Development

MUSCAT, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 20th Jun, 2019) The UAE participated in the 27th meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, Ministerial Committee for Planning and Development, which was held in the Omani capital, Muscat.

The UAE delegation was headed by Eng. Mohamed Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al Shehhi, Under-Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Economy, and included Nada Al Hashemi, Director of the Economic Studies Department at the Ministry of Economy, as well as relevant officials and experts.

Al Shehhi said that the GCC’s efforts related to planning and development have gained increasing importance, in light of the region’s ongoing economic developments that require closeness and integration in creating appropriate development plans, which will serve the strategic goals and increase the competitiveness of the national economies of GCC countries.

He added that the meeting addressed ways of adopting long-term development strategy, and creating a general demographic framework, as well as several strategic priorities, most notably the means of achieving a knowledge-based economy.

The meeting also discussed how to conduct demographic research and collect data from GCC member countries, to prepare the council’s "Demographic Reality Report," as well as the recommendations of a team tasked with creating a long-term development strategy during the committee’s 24th meeting in April 2019.

These recommendations include holding workshops in 2019 on how to exchange expertise, and adopt studies that predict the UAE’s future development plans, as well as on international development indexes related to Kuwait, and the development partnership between civil society organisations in Saudi Arabia.