Arab countries rank last on world list of knowledge-based economy

Director General of the Arab Organization for Industrial Development and Mining Adel Saqr Al-Saqr said here on Monday the Arab countries are still ranked last on the world list in the knowledge-based economy, expenditure on scientific research, development and innovation.
He said, in a speech at the opening of a forum on technological capacity building in the field of modern technologies in the Arab countries, which is organized by the Arab Organization for Industrial Development and Reconstruction, in cooperation with the Amman Chamber of Industry, that the rate of spending in these countries on scientific research ranges between 0.2 to 0.3 percent, well below the world average rate estimated at 1.8 percent, according to the UNESCO report.
Al-Saqr pointed to the humble participation of the Arab sector in investing in the scientific research, stressing that the forum is held in very complex conditions on the Arab and international levels due to the overheating competitions between different poles of the great powers, the global economic recession, the decline in oil prices as well as the ongoing developments witnessed by the Arab region and their impact on research and development.
For his part, representative of Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) in the forum, Dr. Majid Al-Rashidi, stressed in a statement to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) the importance of the forum for Arab research centers, including the Kuwaiti ones.
He said that the forum will discuss the best ways to establish a partnership between researchers and the private sector for the development of technology in scientific research centers and transfer them to the private sector through applications and solutions to the challenges faced by the industrial sector.