The UAE President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, is named by Newsweek magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in the world.
Commenting on its choice, the magazine recognizes the invaluable merits of the President of the UAE in the difficult task of dealing with crisis economic situations, including the current global financial downturn. The magazine informs its readers that for the first time, the current president of the Emirates was faced with the need to solve crisis problems in 1979. Then, a serious credit crisis developed in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi due to the high interest rates on loans that banks issued to UAE citizens for the construction of private houses. Then it was Sheikh Khalifa, who was the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, who managed to find ways out of the crisis and in just a year to reduce the interest rate on loans from 20% to 2%. The committee he created to deal with the crisis was later transformed into a credit organization and made a great contribution to the development of the emirate.
The magazine is sure that thanks to the good leadership of the country, the Emirates managed to significantly reduce the consequences of the current global financial crisis.
After in 2004, Sheikh Khalifa replaced his father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, as president of the UAE, he not only continued the reforms he started, but also initiated his own, including attracting women to government events in the country. It was under Sheikh Khalifa that women took 4 ministerial seats, received more than 30% of leadership positions in government agencies, and the number of business women managing large companies reached the mark of 3,000, Newsweek readers reported.
The magazine also reports that under Sheikh Khalifa, all expatriates, including hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers, had more rights and they became more protected from the arbitrariness of business owners.
