Middle East can benefit from crisis

The onset of the global recession last year was a "defining moment in history", says an influential Dubai-based economist, illustrating how the economic geography of the world is shifting eastwards to the advantage of the Middle East and Asian economies.

"In the past 15 years, the bulk of world output is now produced in Asia and in this part of the world. Forty per cent of the world's output is now produced in Asia and the Middle East. Sixty per cent of the world's economic growth over the past 5 years has come from the emerging markets, and 70 per cent of the increase in world trade came from the emerging markets," Nasser Saeedi, chief economist at the Dubai International Financial Centre, told the Indian Business and Professionals Council (IBPC), on Wednesday.

"We have the opportunity to redraw the financial map of the world," Saeedi said.