Governments must prepare for the “rapid changes that the world is witnessing”, from increasing inflation to the rise of Metaverse, and cryptocurrencies, a UAE minister has said.
Mohammed Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, told the World Government Summit on Tuesday that the world today was “facing more question marks than answers” and that decision-makers needed to adapt quicker to create a better future for their people.
During the opening session for the two-day summit, taking place in the closing days of Expo 2020 Dubai, he said there were three key areas governments should focus on.
There is a frightening and massive acceleration of inflation in countries of the world, which has quadrupled in the last two years
Mohammed Al Gergawi,
Minister of Cabinet Affairs
These include dealing with growing inflation and forming closer partnerships with the private sector.
“The speed of change is bigger than what we expected. What happened in the past 10 years exceeded what’s happened in the past 100 years, and events in the past two years have exceed those in the past decade,” said Mr Al Gergawi.
“There is a frightening and massive acceleration of inflation in countries of the world, which has quadrupled in the last two years. There are many indicators that show massive changes and it’s become a necessity for governments to deal with them.
“The best practice of governments showed partnerships with private companies. Today, a major part of the developments are by the private sector and governments are trying to respond, sometimes very late.”
He touched on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that “we used to think the world had stabilised” with political and co-operation agreements, but instead “here we are facing more question marks than answers”.
He also spoke about how previous government summits in Dubai helped to shed light on future trends.
“Summits have focused on opportunities for government. In 2018, we had a talk about pandemics. The World Health Organisation director spoke about how a pandemic can change governments,” he said.
“The current one affected 480 million people and governments lost tens of trillions of dollars. We saw governments that failed and succeeded.
“We also spoke about cryptocurrency and today governments are trying to live with it. Crypto is worth $2 trillion today.”
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