The Lebanese take holidays very seriously. In a country with 18 official religions, no one is overlooked. According to the central bank's website, there are 21 days off a year for various feasts and commemorations. There is one to mark the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri,and another to commemorate Hizbollah's liberation of south Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000.
I mention this because it is the Easter season, one of the biggies. Between last Friday and next Monday, the country will have had six official days of holiday, to satisfy the demands of both the western and eastern churches.
The British can also be militant about days off. The Centre for Economics and Business Research is concerned. It has calculated that the United Kingdom, with its eight bank holidays, loses about £18 billion (Dh105.16bn) a year (the equivalent of 1.3 per cent growth) by people not going to work - and that's taking into consideration money generated on holidays by theme parks, zoos, restaurants, petrol stations and the like. Britons may work an average of 1,600 hours a year, but that's nothing compared with the South Koreans, who clock up an impressive 2,200 hours at the coal face.
Such weighty issues do not burden the Lebanese. Why should we worry about loss in productivity when the government clearly doesn't place much store in it in the first place?
Last week I banged on about our chronic and acute lack of electricity (in the World Economic Forum's [WEF's] Global Competitive Report for 2011-2012, Lebanon ranks 141 out of 142 in "quality of electricity supply"), but this has been a relatively easy obstacle to jury-rig, what with the advent of a grey market. Appalling internet penetration, on the other hand, is proving trickier to hide behind.
Now comes a report issued by the WEF that tells us that the competitiveness of the Lebanese economy is significantly impaired by weaknesses in the IT sector that deny it the "capacity to take full advantage of economic opportunities accruing from the deployment and use of technologies". Lebanon ranked 95th out of 142 countries and was 11th among the 15 Arab countries in network readiness.
Last October, we were assured that the days of having to wait for our favourite YouTube clips to buffer were over. The fibre-optic cables were in place; and the pricing issues had been resolved. The switch that could take us to online bliss could finally be flicked. And yes, for a tantalisingly brief period, things were much faster. They still are, but somehow we appear to have lost 50 per cent of the initial gain.
Now we are told by the telecommunications ministry that in the coming months there will be a tender for a new project to link residential buildings to something called an FTTx system, the last piece in the nation's fibre-optic backbone. But wait. Nicolas Sehnaoui, the telecoms minister, also admitted that it would take three years for Lebanon's internet speed to match that of "advanced countries".
But the Lebanese are nothing if not optimistic. After announcing plans to upgrade its broad fibre- optics network to a utopian 100 megabits per second, Solidere, the company tasked with rebuilding the Beirut Central District (BCD), has declared that it wants to create a technology park to make the BCD an IT hub for small and medium enterprises. Not to be outdone, a few days earlier, the telecoms ministry told us that it had offered a piece of property it owns in the glamorous suburb of Dikwaneh to the information ministry to establish what it called a "Media and Smart City". Both ideas are bonkers if Mr Sehnaoui's predictions are accurate.
Three years? In terms of today's technology, that's a millennium. If Google is already talking about internet in spectacles, my laptop will be in my brain before the Lebanese have high-speed internet.
Michael Karam is associate editor in chief of Executive, a regional business magazine based in Lebanon
IF YOU GO
The flights
FlyDubai flies direct from Dubai to Skopje in five hours from Dh1,314 return including taxes. Hourly buses from Skopje to Ohrid take three hours.
The tours
English-speaking guided tours of Ohrid town and the surrounding area are organised by Cultura 365; these cost €90 (Dh386) for a one-day trip including driver and guide and €100 a day (Dh429) for two people.
The hotels
Villa St Sofija in the old town of Ohrid, twin room from $54 (Dh198) a night.
St Naum Monastery, on the lake 30km south of Ohrid town, has updated its pilgrims' quarters into a modern 3-star hotel, with rooms overlooking the monastery courtyard and lake. Double room from $60 (Dh 220) a night.
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
Tips for entertaining with ease
· Set the table the night before. It’s a small job but it will make you feel more organised once done.
· As the host, your mood sets the tone. If people arrive to find you red-faced and harried, they’re not going to relax until you do. Take a deep breath and try to exude calm energy.
· Guests tend to turn up thirsty. Fill a big jug with iced water and lemon or lime slices and encourage people to help themselves.
· Have some background music on to help create a bit of ambience and fill any initial lulls in conversations.
· The meal certainly doesn’t need to be ready the moment your guests step through the door, but if there’s a nibble or two that can be passed around it will ward off hunger pangs and buy you a bit more time in the kitchen.
· You absolutely don’t have to make every element of the brunch from scratch. Take inspiration from our ideas for ready-made extras and by all means pick up a store-bought dessert.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
