UAE President among most powerful people in the world
Abu
Dhabi: President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has
been chosen by Newsweek magazine as the 50 most powerful people in the
world.
The US magazine's most recent issue hailed Shaikh
Khalifa's ability to hunt down crises since an early age up to the
current days where he managed to save the United Arab Emirates from the
global financial crisis.
The magazine elaborated on Shaikh
Khalifa's political career, achievements and traits ever since the then
young crown prince of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, back in 1979, was
tasked by his father Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late
founding father of the UAE federation, with tackling the violent
financial crisis that hit the emirate because of high-interest loans
given to nationals to finance new houses and businesses.
Directly addressing
the crisis that hit the emirate few years after independence and before
the discovery of oil, Shaikh Khalifa set up a committee that purchased
the indebted citizens' debts and in less than a year slashed interest
rates on their loans from 20 per cent to less than 2 per cent, said the
magazine.
The said committee later turned into a loan-giving
entity directly and effectively contributing to shooting the quality of
life of the UAE citizens to very high levels, matching those in the
West and the then rich nations and driving extensive urban development
that boosted the popularity of the young crown prince of the emirate,
it noted.
The magazine also noted that Shaikh Khalifa, who
continues to build on the legacy of wisdom of his late father, has
developed strong relations with his own people, the region and the
leaders of world.
It noted that upon taking over in 2004,
Shaikh Khalifa launched reforms and a women-empowering process that led
to appointing four women as ministers, giving women 30 per cent of
senior governmental positions and to increasing the number of
businesswomen to more than 2,400.
Hosting the Louvre Abu
Dhabi, the first universal museum in this region, the Guggenheim museum
and world-class universities such as the Sorbonne and New York
University, Abu Dhabi is set to be a global cultural crossroad, said
the Newsweek.
