The Presidents of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Senegal and the prime ministers of Pakistan and Malaysia will address the Jeddah Economic Forum (JEF) at the Jeddah Hilton from Feb. 19-21. More than 2,000 delegates will be among the overseas participants, aside from a large number from Jeddah and elsewhere in the Kingdom. "Capacity Building: Developing People for Sustainable Growth" is the theme of this year's JEF. The London Business School is the forum's academic partner for the second year in succession. The Jeddah Marketing Board (JMB) of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry is the organizer. Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Sultan bin Salman, Secretary General of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, State Minister Abdullah Alireza and Commerce & Industry Minister Hashem Yamani will be among the JEF's speakers. "This year's forum will focus on creating a vision for sustainable development building on previous theories that took a purely economic approach emphasizing hard dimensions such as the availability of capital and the adequacy of infrastructure," JEF-2005 Chairman Amr Enany said. "This year, we'll adopt a more holistic methodology, covering the softer social dimension with a focus on concepts such as capacity building and expansion of social capital and discussing how institutions of learning, production, regulation and social welfare all fit together and support socio-economic development."
