The Faculty of Business Administration (FBA) at Al Maaref University (MU) hosted on May 29, 2018 Banque du Liban’s First Vice-Governor Raed H. Charafeddine for a seminar talk under the title: "The Role of the Knowledge Economy in the Development of Human Capital in Lebanon". 

The seminar was attended by the Fiscal Attorney Judge Ali Ibrahim, the Economic Advisor at the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Lebanon Mr. Hussein Yadikari, the President of the Lebanese Association for the Advancement of Science (LAAS), Professor Naeim Al Owaini, besides a big crowd of representative of several union, syndicates, civil society, municipalities, academics and FBA students.

After Quran recitation and the Lebanese national anthem, the Dean of FBA, Professor Hussin Hejase, delivered a speech welcoming the guests in advance on the subject of the symposium. During his speech about the topic, Mr. Raed H. Charafeddine stressed that "Banque du Liban has given since 2013 a great importance to the promotion of the knowledge economy through its digital skills and digital accelerators inititives contributing therefore to the establishment of an incubating environment for the knowledge economy for SMEs”. 

Mr. Charafeddine also highlighted that Banque du Liban has ever since injected around $ 1 billion per year in the Lebanese market in forms of subsidized loans through private banks so to provide capital resources to the knowledge economy sector and emerging companies. Mr. Charafeddine emphasized that this made available more than $ 400 million in the knowledge economy sector to this date.

At the level of launching regulatory initiatives, the First Vice-Governor at Banque du Liban pointed out that “Banque du Liban has created cooperation between the financial sector and entrepreneurs in Lebanon through the electronic platform project and the development of the regulatory framework and rules of action for the establishment of finance mobilization companies in Lebanon. Mr. Charafeddine stressed that human capital is the most important pillar of the knowledge economy, and that Lebanon is a good position on this level as it ranks 63th out of 131 globally and ranks 76 out of 188 globally according to the Human Development Index 2017.

Following the talk, an interactive debate took place between the First Vice-Governor at Banque du Liban and the audience where very important questions related to the topics were raised. 

At the end of the seminar, Al-Maaref University’s President Professor Ali Alaeddine and Professor Hussin Hejase handed a commendation award to Mr. Charafeddine.

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