Many people will ask, "what does report got to do with a government summit?"
We are very interested in the government summit, because simply...
DP World, we have partnerships with many governments around the world.
These partnerships are the reason
for our growth and success around the world.
What do we do in DP World? We enable trade.
So, the question is: what's the future of trade?
The future of trade is smart trade. What do we mean by smart trade?
Smart trade means that we move the cargo faster,
smarter, more efficiently, and using cutting-edge technology.
So, government planning is very important for us.
Interaction with government is very crucial for our business.
And if we talk about planning, there is no better example
about sound government planning like the United Arab Emirates.
And as an example of the many development plans in UAE,
we'll take the example of Dubai.
UAE ranks as the 30 highest GDP in the world.
In 1971, the GDP of UAE was two billion dollars,
today it's 400 billion dollars.
How did we get this? How did we reach this stage of development?
It's about planning.
But then if you look at the seventies till today.
The seventies was characterized by building very large infrastructure.
So, the seventies... the union of the UAE was announced in 1971,
and huge construction, the whole country became a construction site.
Building ports, which is very important; in UAE we have 7 ports.
We realize the importance of trade for us.
To be open for trade, we need to develop ports,
and so the huge expansion started with Jabal Ali,
with many other projects: schools, universities, health and so on.
So, the era of the seventies was
construction and infrastructure, which helped the ports.
The era of the eighties was enabling trade.
Free trade zone in Jebel Ali and many other parts of UAE.
In the nineties, it was the year of tourism;
the government decided to make Dubai a tourist place.
What did that mean to us? It means they're going to build more hotels
and more cargoes are gonna come, and the port should be ready.
Just for statistics, in 1990,
there were about 35,000 tourists coming to Dubai.
Today we are close to 15 million.
We would not have reached this if we hadn't plan and prepare our country.
Year 2000 was the electronic government.
And when His Highness announced the electronic government
on a stage like this, many of us didn't know what he meant.
2010 onward, it is the smart government.
Electronic government, you can contact the government, get oil transactions
processed during office hours.
The smart government is working 24/7.
What does that mean to us?
Today, we process in excess of 19 million documents,
whether it's customs, the port, the free zone, or the airport.
It is almost more than 1.5 million document every month.
That is 50,000 document every day.
It will be virtually impossible to process 50,000 document every day
without adopting cutting-edge technologies. Had we not planned ahead,
we would not have been able to handle this much cargo.
This is a very interesting picture.
This picture is an artistic impression done 40 years ago.
When Sheikh Rashid decided to build Jabal Ali,
the contractors... the consultant met with him before designing it,
asking him, "what do you want to build? What do we need to build?
What is your expectation?"
And from his words, they drew this picture.
It is an interesting picture for me, because...
in 1985, when we wanted to... when the government announced the Free Zone,
I wanted more land, and I went to government, to H.H. Sheikh Mohammed,
and he said to me, "you can take as much desert as you want
south of Sheikh Zayed Road."
So, I went to the municipality surveyors and we went to the desert for maybe 4 hours,
and I wanted to take as much land as I could.
The next day the municipality told me,
"you cannot go beyond a certain point, there is an airport there."
And if you see this picture... I don't know if it's clear to you,
on the top you see an airplane flying there; that is the Conchords actually,
because at that time, the future was the Concorde,
and the airport should actually be able to handle a Concord. 40 years ago!
Also, interestingly enough, in this picture, there's a container port.
It is the beginning of containerization actually.
Nobody believed cargo would go into containers,
but 40 years ago, we planned to have an airport,
and to have a container port.
Now...
I tried to argue with the government and with Shikh Mohammed
that there is no airport, because I actually took a helicopter at that time
to see whether there was an airport, and there was no airport.
But Sheikh Mohammed said, "No, we have an airport. It will be an airport".
Here...
The Jebel Ali Free Zone and the port.
The Jebel Ali Free zone today
contributes something like 20% of Dubai GDP.
In this picture, which is very interesting,
you see the airport there at the bottom
and you see the Free Zone and the port at the top
and in the middle is the Logistics City.
This kind of plan that was done 40 years ago helped us,
because having an airport, a logistics park, and a port
is a dream of people in the freight business,
because it allows cargo to move seamlessly without any hindrance.
This cannot happen in many parts of the world.
Look at Antwerp, they could never expand the port,
because the city swallowed the port, there's no way to expand.
But forty years ago we decided we want to use it.
The success of our planning in Dubai
helped us when we went to other countries.
For example, this is London Gateway;
we were able to do a port, a logistics park,
and the airport is already very close to us, whether it's Stansted or Southend.
This could happen when there is enough space in a new greenfield.
We built the largest logistics park in Europe
and invested during the crisis.
This project was so attractive, and we ventured on it during the crisis.
Who would want to go to the banks to borrow money in a crisis
were all the banks around the world were bleeding?
But we had a very interesting proposal to the bank's regarding our investment.
They liked our project, it was interesting for them, and we got financed
at very attractive rates for twenty years, and we built it.
We're doing the same in the Dominican Republic.
In this picture, you see on the left the airport
on the right is the port; we acquired the land in the middle
and we're building a logistics park, because we know it succeeded in Dubai,
it is contributing to the port, and it's going to help us here.
This picture here is very interesting.
This shows you where we are in the world; we are in 31 countries.
These 31 countries
enabling trade in half of the world economy.
Who would believe that UAE built a company
that will enable trade in half of the world economy?
This is something we are very, very proud of.
How did we do this? By working with governments.
We advise government internationally based on our experience.
And there was an example where we actually advised a country
regarding building a port when all the feasibilities were wrong;
all the feasibilities don't show that's gonna be feasible.
But we convinced them to go ahead.
We believed in it and it was a success,
and actually it proved that those feasibilities were not right.
They lacked common sense, they lacked experience.
But why do we want growth?
Why is growth in countries very important for us?
In our business, when you measure by containers,
a growth in the GDP of 1%, translates to 3% in container traffic.
So, for us, whenever we go to any country,
before we go, we look at their growth in GDP,
and we calculate how much the growth is
and we translate the growth into containers; 1 to 3.
So, it is very vital for us to see growth.
What will be the future? What will happen to our business?
What kind of innovations do we need?
Sometimes, innovation brings challenges,
and I'll give you an example: as they build bigger vessels,
we end up with bigger cranes,
and the container business keeps expanding.
Just like they built the 380 airplane, imagine the 380 airplane;
not every airport can handle a 380 airplane, but...
only the airport that has the capability of bringing the passengers in and out.
The same thing in our business.
So, when we built these cranes, they started to be maybe a hundred feet high,
hundred meter high, a hundred fifty.
The crane operator is the person who's like the heart of the port.
We realized that it would be difficult
to be able to see with their own eyes where the container is.
So, what happened?
We looked at automation; at that time automation was an idea,
and people in limited places knew about it.
What we mean by automation, basically, is...
does the crane operator really need to be on top?
Can we put them somewhere else?
And in fact I was discussing with Sheikh Mohammed these challenges
and he comes up... he thinks out-of-the-box actually, and he said,
"If they can fly drones 7,000 kilometers away and they reach their target,
can't you handle a crane a few meters or a few hundred yards away?"
And so we did a test in our port in Busan, Korea,
and a female operator tested a crane to handle cargo,
and within a year we realize that yes it can happen, it can be done,
and we decided to go with it.
That's our future business. Now here is an example:
we announced that...
we asked our employees, "who want to be a crane operator?"
And, interestingly enough, many female workers and nationals
decided to take this new job.
And so, his highness attended when we inaugurated our terminal 3
where a female crane operator...
..handles one crane, and we're training them to handle 2,
and they could be able to handle 8 cranes at the same time.
Now, look, it is a male job, actually.
Crane operator is a male job, and a crane operator can only sit
in the top there for 3 hours.
After 3 hours you got to change him,
because the shaking and the jerking of the seat will hurt him.
Well, here, they are in their own convenience.
And, actually, after they started their job, they said,
"why do we need to be in Jabal Ali?"
So, we are building a crane operating control system in Dubai, in port Rshid,
and we'll handle our port, Jabal Ali, from here with our employees.
Challenges turn to opportunities.
Sometimes you come to a place where we say, "we cannot go"
but we learned in Dubai, we turn challenges into opportunities.
This is an interesting concept, you can read it says Turn 8,
but it's actually Turn to Infinity.
Infinity looks like 8. This is basically an incubation.
We have so many innovations in our industry, but in this particular concept
we actually embraced many innovations.
We have gone through maybe 8,000 enterprises in the last two years.
51 startups! We financed them to start their operations,
from all kinds of businesses; not necessarily our own business.
In this picture there is something interesting.
There is something missing in this picture.
There are no people in this picture.
This is our state-of-the-art...
Rotterdam Gateway Port, in Rotterdam.
This port... there are no humans in it actually.
The humans are somewhere else.
So, you can see the cranes on the left there are no humans in them.
You can see the gantries in the yard. There are no you humans.
Do you see any trucks?
Because this age is the age of the brain.
We are using peoples' brains now.
So, all the people are in their offices thinking
how to serve the customers using their brain.
There is an old saying 50 years ago,
"If you hire two hands, you get their brain for free."
In here, actually, our business is moving smartly to a smart business
whereby we use peoples' brains to develop our business.
So what does the future hold for our business?
Would they transport cargo drones?
Or would it be a hyper loop?
They're contemplating actually handling the cargo and bringing it in tubes.
Which means maybe we don't need sea ports,
maybe the ports should not be in the sea,
maybe the cargo will go to the end user without going to the port.
But no matter what will be in the future;
could be an innovation, could be a disruptive innovation,
but I can assure you, we will be ready for it in Dubai.
We'll be ready for it in DP World. Thank you very much.