Building the dream

"There is a lot of fear; a lot of outright, God-stricken terror," rumbles Saeed Al Muntafiq, as a grimace spreads across his face. There follows a stony silence. The attendant press officer is suddenly fascinated by the contents of her clipboard, while I make a snap judgment and focus firmly on my shoes. Ages pass.

Finally, and to my immense relief, the chairman of the board of Tatweer is unable to maintain the formidable façade a second longer, and breaks into loud laughter. The twinkle is back in the eye, the smile back on the face.

Al Muntafiq recalls early May this year when HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, revealed his bold decision to double the investment in one of Tatweer's flagship projects, the Bawadi hotel strip, to a cool US$55bn. Was the pressure on? Maybe, but then Al Muntafiq is not a faint-hearted man. "I'm contributing to building a country, [although] I never think about it, because Sheikh Mohammed has taught us to be humble, and taught us to think like servants of the country," he smiles.

"That's what I am, so I don't wake up in the morning, beat on my chest, and say ‘I'm building a country'. Our approach is one of humility - I am doing it for my children."

Such modesty is disarming. Under his stewardship, Tatweer, a member of Dubai Holding, is tackling some of the biggest projects in the emirate, including Dubailand, Dubai Healthcare City, Tiger Woods Dubai, Industrial City, and the recently-launched Dubai Mercantile Exchange. It is one of the region's most promising enterprises, and its chairman one of the region's brightest business stars. Not bad going - particularly for a business leader who admits that everything he was told at business school, he "threw out of the window about five years ago". Nowadays, Al Muntafiq's remit spreads far beyond Dubai's borders, and it is with good reason that he is known as much for his wide-ranging strategic abilities, as he is for his management of Tatweer. When we meet, he has just finished explaining to World Economic Forum (WEF) delegates that the region's public/private partnership (PPPs) sector needs a significant boost. Politely but firmly, he is immediately on the offensive. "The government needs to put certain systems and infrastructure in place, to encourage PPPs," he argues. "However, I think the burden today lies more on the private sector, and specifically the established private sector.

"This is the private sector that for the last 25 years has flourished through legacy, through access to certain large projects in Arab countries, and has acquired a base of stability in terms of revenue," he continues.

"I think it is time that those businesses step up to bat - if you've been enjoying 30 to 35% returns over the last 20 years, it's okay for the next two to three years to enjoy 15% returns," insists Al Muntafiq. "If you don't - and this is what I think the private sector is aware of - five years from now, they'll be enjoying 0% returns.

"We cannot keep protecting, as governments, the Arab world from the barbarians that are at the gate," he adds. "These guys are ruthless, they're going to come in and develop better products, better services, better infrastructure, better marketing, and they're going to go after our customers in our marketplace." He insists that the private sector must engage governments in order to design a governance system that will allow the private sector to grow. "We shouldn't be scared," he says. "The private sector should take leadership, should devise the white paper, and should go to governments and say ‘this is how it should be done, this is why it should be done'.

"I understand it should be in certain sectors, I understand it should be over a certain timeframe, but it has to be done in coordination with the private sector," he adds, listing the UAE, Egypt and Jordan as positive examples of change. He adds that the responsibility does not simply lie with the education system alone, but within the very bedrock of Arab culture.

"Any economic plan - any economic development, in my opinion - starts at the family," he argues. "That's because of who we are, because we're Arabs. Arabs revolve around their family culture and their family framework.

"We need to start teaching our children that it's okay to fail, that's it's okay to start your own business, and that the traditional government role of providing jobs is a thing of the past," he continues. "We also need to teach them that this notion of wanting to work from 9am until 2pm is a thing of the past. Those values, in my opinion, have to be taught at home, as well as at school."

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