I am delighted to welcome you all. I thought it may be a good idea to hold this beautiful reception for all distinguished entrepreneurs businessmen, businesswomen, professionals, social & charity leaders.
This reception aims to facilitate face-to-face meeting and secure contact and interaction between all of you and to give us the opportunity to meet each other, to exchange ideas which allows us to create a useful relationship and to keep in touch in order to pave the way for future cooperation not only in business but also in our social life.
To highlight the importance of trade I would like to say that the most famous philosophers such as Thucydides the Greek historian, Adam Smith the Scottish Economist and Montesquieu the French Philosopher, have all agreed that when trading and business grow, war and conflicts disappear.
More than that I can add that trading has indeed a magic power because it helps most of the time to turn enemy into a friend.
If you ask why trading, commerce and business have this magic power, the answer is very simple because they are based on dialogue and openness and both are positive human attitude since dialogue is the opposite of deadlock and openness is the opposite of isolation.
We all know that business is a great activity (pursuit), why? Because it creates jobs and opportunities and serves to reduce the gap between poor and rich and to foster prosperity. Where there is prosperity there is security and stability.
To prove to you how much is important for everybody to have a job let me quote what said Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King 4 days after his assassination. “Every man deserves a right to job or an income, so that he can pursue (enjoy) liberty, life and happiness.”
Even in the Bible, the Old Testament long time ago (couple of thousand years ago) trading had a special consideration for it is written in the chapter Ecclesiastes and I quote “Invest your money in foreign trade and one of these days you will make profit “.
In the same spirit Benjamin Franklin said in the 18th century that” no nation was ever ruined (damaged) by trade”. It means that trade has a major role in the development of nation.
Dear guests, dear businessmen and businesswomen
You should be proud of what you have done because the economic prosperity depends on your private initiative your hard work and your support, you are indeed the cornerstone of the economic power.
Let me end with this beautiful quotation:
If Business is only about making money, it is a poor kind of Business because business should have bigger goals.
Business is like a bike. If you stop pedaling you fall, and if you fall everybody will follow you like a line of dominoes.
So please keep pedaling.