Satyendra Pathak
Doha
The third ‘Qatar Economic Forum, Powered by Bloomberg’ concluded on a high note on Thursday. The forum welcomed more than 1,000 global business leaders in Doha to offer fresh and unique perspectives on the issues driving global boardroom conversations, through the lens of the Middle East.
Day 3, the last day, of the forum explored the future of green investment, cryptocurrencies, and entrepreneurism in the Middle East.
The concluding day of the forum saw Malaysian Minister of Economy Mohd Rafizi Bin Ramli about the strengthening Malaysian economy as part of session seven of the forum on ‘A New Global Growth Story’.
Speaking on the occasion, Ramli said, "We need to maintain a strong sector focus. In the past six months, our primary focus has been on energy transition. We have implemented a few policy changes, including the upcoming launch of a regional, renewable energy exchange market in Malaysia. This market will facilitate and exhilarate cross-border trade in renewable energy.”
"We have taken the very bold step of leading towards a regional energy exchange in the region. We will need to scale up our capacity by about 11 times in the next 20 years, and to make that possible, we must invest approximately 150 billion dollars in infrastructure within the next two decades. Our focus on energy transition benefits the region, investors, and allows us to shift from medium-value manufacturing to high-value leadership in the energy sector.”
Another prominent speaker on the concluding day was Peter Smith, Co-Founder & CEO of Blockchain.com. He said, "The year 2023 has been largely positive for the industry. If you look at ‘year to date’ returns, the digital assets class would be the strongest performing asset class in the financial markets with about 45 percent on the year, so far.”
"It’s worth discussing 2022. In the crypto industry, we experience an incredible cyclical market with a roughly four-year cycle. One of the reasons for its cyclicality is that it’s still a relatively small market. If you combine the total value of all major cryptocurrencies in existence today, it amounts to approximately 0.6 times that of Apple. Consequently, there is bound to be significant volatility and cyclicality within this market. What made 2022 unusual was the occurrence of numerous counterparty failures and company collapses within the crypto space, with one of the most notable examples being FTX,” he said.