Speaker 1: You're listening to Asia Centric from Bloomberg Intelligence, the podcast
Speaker 1: that pulls back the curtain on global business so you
Speaker 1: can invest better across the Asia Pacific Rim. I'm John Lee.
Speaker 1: In Hong Kong. China is forging closer economic ties with
Speaker 1: the golf countries. Already this year, Saudi Arabian companies have
Speaker 1: announced deals to acquire major stakes in Lenovo and Hengli Petrochemical.
Speaker 1: In return, Chinese companies are planning to build more factories
Speaker 1: in the region, while Chinese investors are eyeing the region's
Speaker 1: equity markets. How will closer ties between these regions create
Speaker 1: investment opportunities? Can China help Saudi Arabia transform its economy
Speaker 1: and reduce its reliance on oil through its ambitious twenty
Speaker 1: thirty vision? And how will this relationship be impacted by
Speaker 1: rising US China tensions and the Middle East Wall Here
Speaker 1: to discuss the golf region is Ziar Dud, Chief Emerging
Speaker 1: Markets economists at Bloomberg Economics and Edmund Christell, Senior financials
Speaker 1: analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Both are based in Dubai. Welcomes
Speaker 1: the art and.
Speaker 2: Edmund, Hello John, thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: I know John, I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence
Speaker 1: that you can hear a lot of Mandarin being spoken
Speaker 1: at Dubai's International Airport. Lots of Chinese corporates and investors
Speaker 1: are heading to the region. What's driving China and the
Speaker 1: golf countries to forge closer economic ties.
Speaker 3: Well, to give you one more anecdote, John, there's been
Speaker 3: a new extension of the main mall in Dubai, which
Speaker 3: is called Dubai Mall, and that is basically called Chinatown.
Speaker 2: What is driving this?
Speaker 3: I think there's a few links between China on the
Speaker 3: one hand and the Golf region, which includes are the
Speaker 3: ABAE and for other countries. Link number one is the
Speaker 3: energy link. You know, the golf region is one of
Speaker 3: the biggest producers and exporter of energy particular ail and
Speaker 3: gas in the world, and China is the largest all
Speaker 3: porter in the world. And the golth tends to export
Speaker 3: its energy mostly to Asia and China is a big consumer.
Speaker 3: There's the energy link is one. The second link is investments.
Speaker 3: When all process are high, there's a surplus in the
Speaker 3: Golf Corporation Council the GCC, and they tend to invest
Speaker 3: that abroad and China, although the share is small, but
Speaker 3: is increasingly becoming a destination for these investments. And the
Speaker 3: third link is the security link. The GCC has traditionally
Speaker 3: and historically relied on the US for a security and
Speaker 3: for a geopolitical safety, and recently there is basically an
Speaker 3: attempt to diversify these geopolitical links, and China is one
Speaker 3: divers fire of these links.
Speaker 1: And Edmond, there seems to be a lot of acceleration
Speaker 1: of deals happening over the last year. We had a
Speaker 1: lad which is owned by Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund
Speaker 1: PIF just announcing you will acquire a two billion dollar
Speaker 1: steak in technology company Lenovo. Saudia Ramcome is looking to
Speaker 1: invest in Henley Petrochemical. Do you see this relationship as
Speaker 1: more of a two way street, i e. Both countries
Speaker 1: investing into each other.
Speaker 4: Thanks John, Yes, we see the Gulf Freeeson is very
Speaker 4: well positioned to capture this growing interest from China. We
Speaker 4: see more company in China operating overseas and if you
Speaker 4: look at the FDI as a percentage of the China GDP,
Speaker 4: you can see is much lower than other Asian countries
Speaker 4: a particular career, so there is a huge potential for
Speaker 4: more FDI and company in China to operate outside their boundaries.
Speaker 4: And I think the region is in need for industrial power,
Speaker 4: a need for liquidity, and need for skills and labor
Speaker 4: to help build and support the economic transformation from all
Speaker 4: dependent economician and all dependent economy. So this is a
Speaker 4: long term partnership. It's a two way investment. I think
Speaker 4: there is misperception with some of the investors I have
Speaker 4: met is it's so one way and they think that
Speaker 4: region is flushlesslyquidity, so it's easy to bring this liquidity
Speaker 4: back to.
Speaker 2: China and invested in China.
Speaker 4: And I think from the region here, looking at Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia and the UAE, they've been very strategic on how
Speaker 4: they are investing their money. It has to come to
Speaker 4: a return back to the domestic market and help deliver
Speaker 4: on Vision twenty thirty for the Kingdom for example and Edmond.
Speaker 1: As you alluded to, this is different from the past
Speaker 1: or prior conceptions that it's a one way street. Global
Speaker 1: companies and investors used to go to the Golf region
Speaker 1: to raise money. I think Softmak famously raised sixty billion
Speaker 1: dollars for its Vision Fund from a couple of sovereign
Speaker 1: both funds a few years back. It's different now they
Speaker 1: want investment to also be invested in the region.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean we see also black Row invested five
Speaker 4: billion dollars to bring black Rock to the Kingdom have
Speaker 4: a headquarter here. And I think what's important, I think
Speaker 4: Zad can comment on it more is the lack of
Speaker 4: productivity of the labor. It's one of the issue the
Speaker 4: Kingdom will be facing. Think they've been tackling it by
Speaker 4: bringing headquarters of the company into the Kingdom, making sure
Speaker 4: that this company are contributing to the local economy and
Speaker 4: to the caliber and the talent and the leadership of
Speaker 4: the employment. So I think this has been a very
Speaker 4: important topic under the GENDA and Saudia in particular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just follow business on the productivity side, but
Speaker 3: on the investment side. So, yes, there's been some investment
Speaker 3: announcements and Johnny named a couple of them, and there
Speaker 3: has been an increasing sort of deployment of capital from
Speaker 3: the GCC towards China. But I'd say a couple of
Speaker 3: things here. The first thing is the size of that
Speaker 3: is still small. Yes, the PIF might have deployed two
Speaker 3: billion dollars to buy a Chinese company, But the PIF
Speaker 3: is a nearly one trillion dollar investment fund, so two
Speaker 3: billion relative to one trillion isn't very large. And the
Speaker 3: other thing the investment in petro chemicals. Saudi has had
Speaker 3: the strategy recently where it tries to buy refineries and
Speaker 3: petro chemical facilities and trees where it exports oil, and
Speaker 3: the idea there is you have an advantage as a
Speaker 3: seller of crude oil if you actually have you know
Speaker 3: your buyer is also have partial ownership by you. So
Speaker 3: I think, yes, there's been an increasing sort of flow
Speaker 3: of capital from the GCC towards China, but the deployment
Speaker 3: is sturblatively small, and the sectual stuff we have just
Speaker 3: looked at it in the context of the dynamics of
Speaker 3: the old market.
Speaker 4: And also if you look at the FDI, Saudi Arabia
Speaker 4: is targetting one hundred billion dollars annually. By twenty thirty
Speaker 4: and twenty twenty two, the level was only sixteen billion
Speaker 4: FDI for the Kingdom of which China FDI to Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia was only five billion dollars, so it's very low. However,
Speaker 4: based on recent data, from Emirate and you know, China
Speaker 4: was number one greenfield FDI contributed to the Kingdom in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, and we expect the FDI number coming
Speaker 4: from China and to the Kingdom and the UAE to
Speaker 4: increase significantly in twenty twenty four, but still coming from
Speaker 4: a low BASEE has a higher level of FDI to
Speaker 4: China and the trade floors.
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Speaker 1: Continuing on that theme, Saudi Arabia really needs more foreign
Speaker 1: direct investment now through I guess the prints MBS or
Speaker 1: Muhammed Bin Salman, it has an ambitious plan to spend
Speaker 1: one trillion dollars to develop its tourism industry and to
Speaker 1: diversify away from oil. It's creating theme parks, it's creating
Speaker 1: a new high tech city, neum and its line project,
Speaker 1: which is supposedly going to house millions of people and
Speaker 1: run entirely on renewable energy. How can China help Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia with its ambitious goals?
Speaker 2: Let me just say a few things here.
Speaker 3: One of them is hel can China help well. One
Speaker 3: of the ways in which it could help is China
Speaker 3: has expertise in building infrastructure, and Saudi will need that
Speaker 3: sort of infrastructure and can tap into China's expertise on
Speaker 3: that front. Charlie is trying to develop his tourism industry.
Speaker 3: China has one billion people, so you know, the flow
Speaker 3: of tourists from China to Saudi could also help. But
Speaker 3: I think also there's a cautionary thing here, which is
Speaker 3: basically Saudi needs to also be aware of not.
Speaker 2: Building too much.
Speaker 3: You need to build enough capacity that brings other people
Speaker 3: and that lifts the infrastructure quality of the country. But
Speaker 3: you also need to be worry of not building excessive
Speaker 3: infrastructure that's not going to be used. And maybe also
Speaker 3: China can tell Saudi where things probably are needed. And
Speaker 3: given Chinese also historical experience with building cities and infrastructure,
Speaker 3: some of it was usedful, some of it wasn't. So
Speaker 3: also to basically give a warning when things things are excessive.
Speaker 1: How real are the intentions of Saudi authorities to spend
Speaker 1: in these grand projects like NEOM and the Line project.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to the investors that don't really follow
Speaker 1: the region very much what this project is.
Speaker 3: So NEUM is a new futuristic city in the northwest
Speaker 3: of Saudi Arabia. The Line, which is a linear city
Speaker 3: that goes perpendicular to the sea and to the sort
Speaker 3: of the inland of Saudi Arabia, is a part. When
Speaker 3: the project was announced, I think in twenty seventeen, the
Speaker 3: budget for that was something like half a trillion dollars,
Speaker 3: but probably with all infrastructure projects, particularly in the Gulf,
Speaker 3: the budget is starting to overrun. So that's basically the idea.
Speaker 3: The idea is create a futuristic city, to make it
Speaker 3: attractive for people to live there, to be run by robots,
Speaker 3: to have the highest number of mission unstyled restaurants per
Speaker 3: capita in the world, all the futuristic elements that you
Speaker 3: can think of. Now, the Coutiari side of that is,
Speaker 3: are the costs justified and can Sadia afford this? I
Speaker 3: think what we've seen recently and in particular in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four that there were a lot of ambitious announcements
Speaker 3: from Saudi Arabia about building and spending and large budgets,
Speaker 3: but there has been a scaling down of some of
Speaker 3: these targets. So I've seen the Minister of Finance coming
Speaker 3: out and saying some of the projects areb dated Division
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, some of them are likely to be delayed,
Speaker 3: some of them are like to be spaced out over
Speaker 3: a longer period of time, some of them might be shelved.
Speaker 3: We've seen, for example, Saudi had an ambitious target to
Speaker 3: double or triple the population of his capital Cityriald by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, and that ambition has been scaled down. And
Speaker 3: I've also seen news that the line which is supposedly
Speaker 3: one hundred miles long linear city to house millions of people. Again,
Speaker 3: the plans now seems to be smaller and scaled back,
Speaker 3: and by twenty thirty only a small fraction of that
Speaker 3: will be built.
Speaker 1: And do you think the decision to scale back was
Speaker 1: partly influenced by the development of the Israel Hamas War.
Speaker 3: Other fics related to the regional geopolitics, So I think
Speaker 3: this is a financial decision. So you have Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 3: which basically gets most of this revenue, at least externally
Speaker 3: from oil sales abroad. That's all dominates Saudi exports, and
Speaker 3: it tends to spend on these projects. And in the
Speaker 3: context where even on all prices were relatively high last
Speaker 3: year at eighty three dollars per barrel, Saudi Arabia was
Speaker 3: running a budget deficit, so I think even in that environment,
Speaker 3: we're always high. Tadema felt that it was overstretching itself
Speaker 3: and some of these projects may not return or yield
Speaker 3: the return that it had hoped before, and therefore there
Speaker 3: was an element of scale impact. The Minister of Finance
Speaker 3: actually in May he gave another justification, which is basically
Speaker 3: saying we're scaling back because if you build too much
Speaker 3: and you don't have the capacity to absorb it, you
Speaker 3: end up importing too much and that's not good for
Speaker 3: the economy, so you get a lot of leakages. And
Speaker 3: therefore the slowing the spending pattern down so that they
Speaker 3: reduce the leakages in the form of imports.
Speaker 1: And just to pursue this idea of Saudi Arabia becoming
Speaker 1: a tourist destination, some people view this as a very
Speaker 1: high ask. It's still a very conservative country. You know,
Speaker 1: females are only allowed to drive. Recently, alcohol is banned
Speaker 1: in many parts. Do you personally think that they're making
Speaker 1: the right path here in terms of transforming its economy.
Speaker 3: Well, let's look at the numbers, especially in twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: Was announced in twenty sixteen, and the targets are for
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, so we're more than halfway through that. What
Speaker 3: has gone right? A few things have gone right. So
Speaker 3: the government has increased it non oil revenue, the revenue
Speaker 3: it gets from oil. It has increased uman participation in
Speaker 3: the that has nearly doubled, partly because women are actually
Speaker 3: participating in party. There's a statistical sort of change of methodology.
Speaker 3: But I think there are things that having gone quite
Speaker 3: according to targets and plants. One of them is that
Speaker 3: exports are absolutely dominated oil oil. If you look at
Speaker 3: oil and related products, we're talking about eighty to ninety
Speaker 3: percent of that is oil plus related products. And if
Speaker 3: you look at the government's spending, for example, it has
Speaker 3: basically run so SADY might have increased normal revenue, but
Speaker 3: the spending has actually outpaced that. So the dependence on
Speaker 3: oil has over time increased, and we estimate that basically
Speaker 3: Saudi Araba needs if you look at the central government alone,
Speaker 3: it needs all price in the region of ninety one
Speaker 3: dollars per barrel to balance his budget. If you include
Speaker 3: also domestic investments by the Sovereign Wealth Fund, because a
Speaker 3: lot of the domestic investments has gone is now executed
Speaker 3: by the Sovereign Wealth Fund instead of the central governments.
Speaker 3: So you need to take that into account when calculatd
Speaker 3: the dependence on oil. If you take that into account
Speaker 3: and incorporate it into you're spending, the Saudi Arabia needs
Speaker 3: oil prices of one hundred and eight dollars per barrel
Speaker 3: to meet these spendings. So ninety one or one hundred
Speaker 3: and eight dollars per barrel is high. It's hard that
Speaker 3: it was in the past, and it's harder than the
Speaker 3: current market price. So the dependence on oil has, if anything,
Speaker 3: increased over time.
Speaker 1: Edmund, we joked about how there's so much Mandarin being
Speaker 1: heard at Dubai International Airport. I know that you traveled
Speaker 1: to China, you traveled to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: You met hundreds of investors. How real is the interest
Speaker 1: is of Chinese investors looking to deploy money in the
Speaker 1: Gulf region.
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely there is significant interests given the headwind in
Speaker 4: the domestic market and the low return on the equity
Speaker 4: market in China, so they are looking at a way
Speaker 4: to diversify and generate higher return. The region, as we
Speaker 4: all know, at higher oil prices is generating higher liquidity,
Speaker 4: more opportunities and the transformation gender that's happening either in
Speaker 4: the Saudi or we have also strategy spending happening in
Speaker 4: the UAE, and specific sector like cybersecurity, semiconductor and food
Speaker 4: securities are upgraading infrastructure is creating opportunity for Chinese investors
Speaker 4: to look at the region. I think the challenge they
Speaker 4: face is they look at the region as one dynamic,
Speaker 4: which is not things the AD explained that Saudi is
Speaker 4: spending more, is learning more of the cash they need
Speaker 4: higher oil prices, so more liquidity into Saudi is very
Speaker 4: important than deploying liquidity outside of Saudi. For the UAE
Speaker 4: and KATAR, I think we do have liquidity looking at
Speaker 4: opportunity to deploy liquidity outside the UAE and the strategic
Speaker 4: sector that you bring specific technology to the UAE, that
Speaker 4: strategic sector technology that will be an important area to
Speaker 4: focus on.
Speaker 2: So I think the interest is there.
Speaker 4: The clarity on where the opportunity is is yet to
Speaker 4: be established. You know, investors are looking at what sector
Speaker 4: they should focus on, where the opportunity is. If we
Speaker 4: look at the UE, for example, the hospitality sector has
Speaker 4: already been established, so the UAE in the next five
Speaker 4: year is not spending on the hospitality yet. The UAE
Speaker 4: is spending on housing because the population is growing, spending
Speaker 4: on upgrading infrastructure and railway, so this is important, and
Speaker 4: also the semicontactor and the industrial part of the economy.
Speaker 4: If we look at Saoudi, Saudi doesn't have hospitality sector.
Speaker 4: It's spending significantly on the hospitality sector in the near term,
Speaker 4: plus transportation and what we call it mixed use development
Speaker 4: that will be recreational asset and commercial offices. So I
Speaker 4: think this is where the discussion has been very interesting
Speaker 4: to understand the different dynamic between the UE and Saudi.
Speaker 4: It's not one region to target in terms of products,
Speaker 4: offering or any value proposition. You are coming to investor
Speaker 4: in the region to buy and I think for Saudi
Speaker 4: I truly believe it's more of a long term partnership
Speaker 4: to build and that is a risk of any geopolitics
Speaker 4: plus U as China tensions, that could be an issue
Speaker 4: of trust between the two regions to deploy capital for
Speaker 4: the long term.
Speaker 1: And Edmund, you know one of the Chinese ETF issues
Speaker 1: with CESAP mont. It's first Saudi Arabia ETF in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: which gives access to vessis in this part of the
Speaker 1: world to Saudi Arabian equities. Is this just the start
Speaker 1: of a growing trend.
Speaker 4: This is a great collaboration and work between the PIF,
Speaker 4: the Saudis of Rafun and Sea Soap. For the first
Speaker 4: listing in Hong Kong, we believe there will be another
Speaker 4: listing happening in the mainland China.
Speaker 2: And this is very very.
Speaker 4: Important for Saudi to get the scale because Hong Kong
Speaker 4: would not be sufficient in terms of the flow that
Speaker 4: comes into underlying as the ATF, so they need to
Speaker 4: list it in mailand China and maybe other countries. So
Speaker 4: probably we're going to see the Saudi ETF listed in
Speaker 4: different countries across all Asia and the opposite you're going
Speaker 4: to see where UAE and Krattar could be potential candidate
Speaker 4: for similar listing of their ETF and Hong Kong and
Speaker 4: China later on, which could all of this paved the
Speaker 4: way for a cross listing of equity in the future,
Speaker 4: which will take more time in terms of the regulation
Speaker 4: has to be set up and the framework with term
Speaker 4: of the countroparty risks, et cetera. But this is very exciting.
Speaker 4: But if you look at the start the ATF and
Speaker 4: Hong Kong was listed since November last year and the
Speaker 4: fund and flow still low is around the nine million
Speaker 4: dollars since inception, so a lot of work need to
Speaker 4: be done. Clearly, investors are interested as I seen from
Speaker 4: my trip to Meland China, but in terms of the
Speaker 4: investment in flow into the fund it's still low level,
Speaker 4: so execution need to be done. And also you do
Speaker 4: have the what I learned during my trip, there is
Speaker 4: overseas quota share on how much you can invest. So
Speaker 4: also this doesn't make it challenging for the money to
Speaker 4: get out.
Speaker 1: Edmund after making these hundreds of investors, what's your sense
Speaker 1: how knowledgeable are they in the region.
Speaker 4: I think they are in the exploration phase trying to understand. First,
Speaker 4: their main concern is geopolitics the world that's happening between
Speaker 4: Israel and Hamma, how this is impacting the region, how
Speaker 4: this is impacting the tourism industry in the Kingdom. They
Speaker 4: see more risks of this war impacting the rect sea projects,
Speaker 4: and during my trip, the complex was back and forth,
Speaker 4: so you can see that there is a lot of
Speaker 4: uncertainty on how they don't see there is a clear
Speaker 4: path of how this war will end up or how
Speaker 4: it will phase out, and what the spell over impact
Speaker 4: will be on Saudi if something wrong happened. The other
Speaker 4: thing is the tension between the US and China has
Speaker 4: been brought a few times in terms of the long
Speaker 4: term relationship. To build a long term relationship, you need
Speaker 4: to have a trust, and deploying capital into the region
Speaker 4: and then having issue later on in terms of US
Speaker 4: and the Reesian relationship could be something that they have
Speaker 4: to think about it twice before deploying a larger motor capital.
Speaker 1: With these geopolitical tensions, the US is imposing a lot
Speaker 1: of sanctions on Chinese companies, especially in the technology field.
Speaker 1: So it's quite interesting that this PIF led in the
Speaker 1: was to a Chinese technology company Lenovo. Do you think
Speaker 1: these sanctions and geopolitical tensions will influence what type of
Speaker 1: industries companies they will invest into China?
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say this for the GCC, the US has
Speaker 3: traditionally been the main political sort of backer, main security backer,
Speaker 3: and main seller of arms. But the GCC also China
Speaker 3: is the biggest commercial market. They export a lot of
Speaker 3: their oil that goes east tours China. So in the
Speaker 3: world now, I think there are three geopolitical hotspots. There's
Speaker 3: Russia Ukraine, which is sort of the GCC is immune
Speaker 3: from that. If anything, some pockets in the GCC, like
Speaker 3: Dubai is benefiting by having an influent population that's coming
Speaker 3: from Russia Ukraine into the GCC with their money. There
Speaker 3: is the Middle East conflict in Gaza, which is closer
Speaker 3: to the GCC, but it hasn't quite influenced it yet
Speaker 3: in the sense that oil is still flowing and ails
Speaker 3: the lifeblock the economy here and are still flowing uninterrupted
Speaker 3: to different parts of the world. And then there's the
Speaker 3: sort of China US tensions, the two great powers. And
Speaker 3: I think the gccit wants neutrality. What it doesn't want
Speaker 3: to take in size in this conflict. As I said,
Speaker 3: one of them is the historical ally and one of
Speaker 3: them is the commercial partner. And there has been explicit
Speaker 3: but also implicit statements from GCC officials saying we don't
Speaker 3: want to make a choice here. But of course, if
Speaker 3: things escalate between the US and China, if more sanctions
Speaker 3: are imposed on Chinese companies, then that might make life
Speaker 3: a little difficult for the GCC.
Speaker 4: And what I mean since is most of this investment
Speaker 4: has been in the hardware, not the software, and the
Speaker 4: sanction become more crucial when it comes to the software
Speaker 4: development than the hardware. So we know that as you
Speaker 4: explained before, PIF already invested an ex surveillance company Dahua.
Speaker 4: I believe spend it correctly, and this is what's sanctioned
Speaker 4: by the US. But they are developing hardware and Lenovo
Speaker 4: is focusing on the hardware side of the business. So
Speaker 4: I think Saudi is aiming to manufacture at the hardware level,
Speaker 4: one that could not create any threat relationship.
Speaker 1: Edmund, when you met these investors in China, looking at
Speaker 1: the region, some of them for the first time, what countries,
Speaker 1: what sectors do you think that will be interested in
Speaker 1: the Gulf region.
Speaker 4: The energy definitely, that says great opportunity will always be
Speaker 4: the contracting sectors. We know that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: opportunity for the contractors from mainland China to start thinking
Speaker 4: about the region here in terms of the expansion, as
Speaker 4: I said, the UAE is spending a lot of money
Speaker 4: on the housing sectors, and the excess supply of contractors
Speaker 4: and China, given the head whend the market is facing domestically,
Speaker 4: could be deployed in terms of resources, capacity and manpower
Speaker 4: and to the region energy as I said, and that
Speaker 4: will be the ad discussed before, is the skills and
Speaker 4: the infrastructure and the ability to deploy infrastructure and to
Speaker 4: the region that know how, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I think this is very important.
Speaker 4: We also discuss food security as an interesting area that
Speaker 4: where the region always since COVID has been focusing on
Speaker 4: food security as a priority for the government, and this
Speaker 4: is where the technology could be deployed as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are the biggest misconceptions investors have about the
Speaker 1: Gulf region?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a that's a tough one to speak on
Speaker 3: behalf of other people.
Speaker 2: Here's my thing.
Speaker 3: I think it's the GCC is probably more open than
Speaker 3: people generally think in the sense of social openness. It's
Speaker 3: extremely safe, and I think the impact from the war
Speaker 3: in the Middle East hasn't quite affected it yet. You know,
Speaker 3: if you open the street, the population is probably you know,
Speaker 3: more politically engaged, probably more in tune of what is happening.
Speaker 3: But on the street, this is completely safe, and it's
Speaker 3: completely unaffected. And the economies are largely and affected. And
Speaker 3: many of the cities in the Gulf are actually more
Speaker 3: or less international cities where there's a large population backpattery
Speaker 3: espose from the region and outside, and I feel like
Speaker 3: international city where English is generally spoken as the first language.
Speaker 1: And Edmund, did you want to chime in on this?
Speaker 4: I think top one for me will be social openness,
Speaker 4: the ability to blend within the society and enjoy your
Speaker 4: life as experts, and the high quality of life people
Speaker 4: ask me, I mean during my trip is if I'm
Speaker 4: able to enjoy my weekend the im is going back
Speaker 4: to the UK or not? And is there a school
Speaker 4: available everywhere? The choice of school, et cetera. And we
Speaker 4: do have a lot of school UAE has a lot
Speaker 4: of school options, KATA has number one of schools and
Speaker 4: the regions. So I think, yeah, there is misuception in
Speaker 4: terms of the infrastructure available for the experts, the support
Speaker 4: they can get in terms of healthcare, education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a fascinating discussion on the Gulf Region,
Speaker 1: China and geopolitical risks with Zia Dold, Chief Emerging Markets
Speaker 1: Economists at Bloomberg Economics, and Edmund Christal, Senior financials analyst
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Intelligence. Edmund, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2: Thank John. Thank you John.
Speaker 1: I'm John Lee in Hong Kong. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Clara Chan and you've been listening to the Asia
Speaker 1: Centric podcast