Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) Doha chapter recently organised a seminar on “Top Global Risks of 2015” at Doha Bank auditorium, which was attended by more than 100 members of the ICAI Doha Chapter and finance professionals in Qatar.
The objective of the seminar was to raise awareness about global risks and identify its impact on various regions such as the US, Europe, emerging markets (EM), GCC and India.
Doha Bank Group CEO Dr R Seetharaman in his inaugural address explained the 2008 financial crisis and how it impacted liquidity and solvency and eventually resulted in the sovereign crisis.
While emphasising “that businesses are becoming borderless and we are living in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world”, he explained how volatility in commodity prices could affect global economy.
M Raghu, head (research) at Kuwait Financial Centre, was the keynote speaker at the seminar. He said risk was inevitable and was not something to be feared or scared, but it was to be understood and analysed in order to take preventive action to safeguard enterprises and economy.
Raghu categorised risks into three buckets such as geopolitical, economic and capital markets. Geopolitical risks comprise the political scenario in Russia, Greece, Iran and other conflicts in the region.
He said tension in Russia and the possible exit of Greece from the European Union post-election have “low impact on the GCC but high impact on emerging markets and Europe”.
He also gave an insight into the worsening state of Greek economy with debt being 174% of country’s GDP and unemployment rate at 26%, according to International Monetary Fund data.
Raghu spoke on economic risks, which he said consisted of challenges on growth and deflation, falling oil prices, hike in interest rates in US and movement of dollar vis-à-vis other currencies.
As per the IMF, while US and India would lead the growth story of the world, over-all growth will be subdued in 2015 and export-oriented Chinese economy was expected to face rough weather due to global turmoil &shrinking demand.
The participants were welcomed by Rupalakshmi Setty, ICAI (Doha Chapter) secretary.
Among those who spoke were George Isaac, chairman and Raja Gopalakrishnan, vice chairman.
RM Parakh, a winner of the Pravasi Bharat Samman by the Government of India and founder chairman of Muscat chapter of ICAI also attended the seminar as a guest.