A Vision for Kurdistan’s Future Through StabilityInnovation, and Economic Growth
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – Kurdistan Region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani delivered an insightful address at the World Government Summit (WGS) 2025 in Dubai, emphasizing strategic governance, economic resilience, and digital transformation as key pillars for Kurdistan’s futureSpeaking on a panel, titled “Navigating Challenges, Embracing Opportunities: A Talk with H.E. Masrour Barzani”, Prime Minister Barzani outlined his administration’s efforts in fostering political stability, economic growth, and private sector engagement, positioning Kurdistan as a model of progress in a turbulent region.
Full transcript of the interview below:Deputy Minister of Cabinet Affairs for Competitiveness and Experience Exchange Abdulla Lootah (Moderator): Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, it is often said that true leadership is tested in times of challenge, in an era of global uncertainty, hardships, and involving geopolitical landscapes. Decisive leadership is more crucial than ever.
Today's far-sought leadership in times of challenge will delve into how visionary leaders navigate complexity, foster resilience, and drive sustainable progress. I am honored to have this conversation with His Excellency Masrour Barzani, whose leadership has been instrumental in balancing stability, economic growth, and strategic government administration in Kurdistan.
I would like to take this moment as well to command the leadership of His Excellency Massoud Barzani in navigating Kurdistan through a complex regional landscape while assuring both economic growth and security. His vision and strategic government administration has strengthened Kurdistan's resilience, fostering an environment where businesses can thrive, infrastructure can develop, and opportunities can expand.
Moderating the session is actually a huge, huge honor for me, because sometimes many people moderate and they don't know that at least I was privileged and honored to listen to this talk, and to see what you've done, Your Excellency, to your nation and your people. If you may allow me, first of all, we would like to hear from you about your strategic vision for your beloved nation.
PM Barzani: Thank you, Abdulla. Thank you very much. I am very pleased and honoured to be here and to come back to Dubai to do work on the summit, and it's good to see you again. Of course, you've been instrumental in supporting us and helping us as government and also on a personal level, so I must extend my thanks to the government of the UAE and also to yourself.
Of course, no one can do everything alone. I'm very pleased to say and honoured that we have a very dedicated staff, people that are working day and night to help us achieve our goals. Of course, like many other nations, many other countries, we have many challenges, but our goal is to move forward, to take care of the problems, make sure that the damages are minimal, and learn from mistakes, change risks to opportunities.
Also we try to look at how we can develop our economy, help the political stability, and of course maintain the security that we do have in Kurdistan, which has been instrumental in attracting businesses throughout the world to come to our region.
We are trying to solve our political disputes and problems with the federal government in Baghdad, but at the same time look at the opportunities that are available, work closely with the private sector, look at how we can reform the government projects and the agenda that we have for reform in Kurdistan. So far, I can say that we have been successful in achieving many goals that we have, but of course there is a lot that we need to do in the future.
Moderator: Your Excellency, amazing, amazing tips on how to navigate in an ever changing world. And this is where I think many of us here, including myself, would like to get some lessons and tips on how we see leadership in managing things delicately, politics, environment, climate change, economic, social, youth expectations. If you can advise on effective leadership of today, what's required for leadership?
PM Barzani: Dedication, honesty, determination, resilience, these are qualities that every leadership need to have. You need to look at what your people want the most. You always have to put people at the center of your agenda and that's exactly what I did. I looked at our people and see what they need and how we can best serve our people. In order to do that there are many things that you have to do.
You have to make compromises, you have to actually fight in many different fronts to achieve the goals that will be once again put to the use of the people. So we've been trying to look at the well-being of people, how we can do this. Of course, expectations are too many. There are always the younger generation that is more motivated, that wants to have a better future and there is also the old generation that is used to a particular way of life and you need to also accommodate their needs.
Keeping that balance is a bit challenging but it's not impossible. You need to work with different generations, you need to look at different opportunities and also you have to learn from the success stories of the countries that have gone through this path. And in our case, UAE has been a model that we've been looking up to, and really has helped us to accelerate the changes and the reforms that we have done in our region.
Moderator: I would like to zoom in on how you see the role of the youth of Kurdistan in the prosperity of Kurdistan in the coming years.
PM Barzani: Of course education always is the first thing. We are trying to build institutions that can provide a world standard education to our youth. I'm proud to say that today we have many different universities, some public, some private. And many of our graduates are now coming back to either the public sector or have their own private businesses.
The government has been supportive to help the entrepreneurs and new businesses to form. And we have been, we have launched many programs. One of them is Bloom, for instance, that the government is providing loans to those who are interested in doing their own business. I've met with some of the people who have benefited from this program and the government and as a result many others are now looking at the success stories of these young entrepreneurs who have expanded their businesses, who have managed to employ many others and they are looking at this success story and trying to imitate what they have done in their own ways.
So the government in my view should be a regulator, a facilitator and not dictate how people want to live their life. Of course, everything has to be within the framework of law, but as, you know, if the government can help the younger generation to come up with their own way of life, as long as they respect the law and do not cross the lines, I think that would be the best way to motivate the younger generation and I'm happy to say that we have a very dedicated young generation today in Kurdistan that is willing to take up the challenge and move forward.
Moderator: How do you create this particular diversity within Kurdistan so that you keep an eye on the big guys coming from abroad, keeping in mind that you also want to include those people from there.
PM Barzani: We are not trying to exclude any, part of, let's say, whether they're major big corporate, you know, corporations, businesses, or the younger entrepreneurs. We're trying to provide, equal opportunities to everyone. As far as for the, bigger companies, we have a very attractive law of investment that is trying to attract either local or foreign investors to come and invest in Kurdistan with tax exemptions with the facility and the facilitations that they need in order to, be able to invest in Kurdistan.
Of course, that’s also been very helpful in terms of the crisis that we've gone through. There were times of COVID, for instance. There were times of political dispute that we had with the federal government where the budget of Kurdistan was completely cut. What helped us was the private sector. The private sector was the one that actually kept our economy running. And despite all the challenges, we've managed to actually develop and not stop at where we were at the moment. This is going to obviously help, some aspects of the economy.
In order to create jobs, you always need to look at the middle class, you always need to look at the entrepreneurs because these are the ones that are providing maximum jobs for people who are looking for jobs. And I don't intend to make the government to be the only platform to, take employee, you know, employees. And in fact, private sector can help the government, to do, you know, to do the reform by reducing the size of the public sector.
Moderator: What's happening with the digitalisation strategy?
PM Barzani: Yes, we have a very aggressive reform programme of digitalising our system, whether it's public services, whether it's our economy, financial institutions, business to business, daily businesses, so everything we are actually looking at how we can best digitalize our systems and educate our people to know how to use these new systems that is provided for them.
Let's not forget, you know, we still have an older generation that is struggling to use this, you know, new technology. But that's not stopped us because we continue to provide the services for those who need it but also we have created a very advanced data center and we are trying to do basically everything based on the analysis and the calculation of the data that we have.
We are looking at how best we can create a system where citizens can easily deal with the daily lives and the businesses they need, their requirements and even interactions with the government without having to go through so many different routines and then be bored with it. We are cutting down all these steps, we are trying to make things available for them. For instance, payment.
People have to go and stand in line to pay for electricity or for any bills that they have to pay the government. Now, with this new systems, with the digitalization, you can actually use your phone to pay whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. So these are the kind of things that people expect and we are at the stage of transition. I'm not saying that we have done everything yet, but we have a very good start.
Moderator: When we speak about and this is my last question, as we speak about advanced technologies, it's all about the future, about AI, about so many things. But let's talk to the people in this audience and people who are watching us and listening to us online. What is your dream for your nation? What's your dream for the people and the vision that you have for your beautiful nation?
PM Barzani: Kurdistan is a beautiful place. We are not trying to copy any other country. We are not trying to imitate any other country. We want to learn from the successes that the successful countries and nations have achieved.
In 10 years' time, I see Kurdistan as a peaceful, prosperous, developed region that can be a beacon of hope for many people in this turbulent area of the Middle East, with a developed and sustainable economy, with basically digital financial banking system, with investments coming from different parts of the world.
With the diversification policy that we have today looking at developing different sectors like agriculture, industrialization, tourism, education, health sector. We hope that Kurdistan not only can provide best services to its people and beyond, but it can be a region where I hope people from the rest of the Middle East or the rest of the world can look at Kurdistan as the new destination, for development and hope.
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