Significantly, Arab countries were called to look at IT from a strategic point of view because Israel has made major progress in IT through Russian immigrants and its relations with the U.S. by Dr. Ehsan Bou Hleika, representative of Saudi Chambers and Saudi Shura Council, who stressed that failures would negatively affect the Arab world.
Noureddine Bou Karrouh, Algerian Minister of Contribu-tion and Reforms, said Algeria had been calling for joint resistance to terrorism for the past ten years. Its 'war zone status' had hindered all investments including in IT.
"September 11 has strongly changed the global concept of security. We hope Algeria is out of the war zone, a term that made investments run away."
Yesterday's concluding session of the 9th Conference for Arab Businessmen and Investors chose Algeria as the host of the 10th conference.
Al Sunaidy said the Omani complex would include IT colleges, research units for telecom programmes and incubators for individual initiatives."
Around 1,000 telephone lines and optic-fibre cables would be installed, he added.
"Oman allows 100 per cent ownership of IT investments and the promising Omani IT market constantly expands. The market is in need of software on financial services, health, education, telecom and other vital sectors."
Bou Karrouh said Algerian privatisation plan included government departments, telecommunications, water and electricity, services, banks, tourism and air and land transport projects. Egypt's Orascom acquired a GSM licence and a cement project while Jordanians were granted a pharmaceutical project.
Bou Hleika said developing countries were not expected to achieve jumps in Internet penetration. The spread of Internet is only estimated to grow in 2005 at 4 per cent against 72 per cent for the developed world.
Though English dominates 47.5 per cent of websites, shares of other languages will be 4.4 per cent for South Korean, 3.1 per cent for Italian and 2.5 per cent for Portuguese.
"The users of those languages are less than the 280 million people in the Arab World and more in the Islamic world.
"PC ownership in the Arab world does not exceed 15 per cent against 50 per cent for Europe and the U.S. Networking prices must be reduced for all and websites contents should be solid."
Dr. Abdulilah Dewachi, regional advisor, communications and computer networking, of UN's Escwa, said Arab IT industry lacks a clear strategy because it was a complicated industry that required huge investments.
Arab IT industry is dependant on assembly rather than local designing, which sometimes represents 90 per cent of final product. It also lacks proper marketing.
Mohammed Al Sharek of Sakhr said the company faced many obstacles when it was initially formed. These were attributed to the small market size, piracy of software and and complicated specifications of Arabic language.
With time and the spread of Internet, Arab markets expanded and Arab governments showed more interest in telecom infrastructure.
Khaled bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE IT expert, said Arabs must choose technologies enhancing business processes and should win users' credibility gradually.
