ARTICLE: Full Speed Ahead - Developing the Middle East's Transport Infrastructure, By Ian Lewis, Global Arab Network, 16 July 2009

Great ambitious stuff to see that goes a long way to rectifying the Middle East's weak infrastructure connectivity with the outside world (to date, it's been mostly about the oil). But now we see port, airport and rail efforts clearly designed to move a lot more than just energy, and that's crucial. So long as the Mideast remains harder to reach, it stays too expensive for most global supply and production chains, thus its labor remains un-tap-able.

There's no reason for this to be the case other than the security fears. Generally, we're talking a fairly solid work force in terms of literacy and so on, and the location is great. It's just a matter of creating positive investment climate and few things do that better than infrastructure development.

(Thanks: jarrod myrick)