Five influential issues for this year’s Davos agenda

By the time you read this I shall be in the refreshing environs of Davos, 1,560 metres up a Swiss mountainside and enjoying (enduring?) a nighttime low of around minus 8. If that isn’t enough to shock the grey matter into action, I don’t know what is.

I’m a convinced Davosophile, rather than Davosophobe. The annual gathering in the Alps is an invigorating interlude at the beginning of the year, a chance to get some fresh thinking done on the big issues we will all face in the coming months.

Some people dismiss the World Economic Forum's annual meeting as an ineffective talking shop, all "hot air in a cold climate", but I don't agree. You have to understand the issues to confront the problems, and this is what the WEF is good at: presenting the issues and explaining the alternative approaches towards a solution.

But it is good to go there with an agenda. Otherwise, with all the sheer cerebral energy being generated, you stand the risk of information overload. So here are the questions to which I’ll be looking for answers from the assembled experts at Davos 2015, under the slogan “the new global context”.

• First, I want to know how the experts see the prospects for oil this year. For the UAE, this is the crucial question, affecting nearly every facet of economic life in the Emirates.

We expect, of course, it will be lower than previous years, after the sharp drops in the final quarter of 2014. But every dollar counts in the policymakers’ budget plans, and there is a big difference between $55 a barrel, where some see it ending the year, and $75, the more benign view.

I will also look for some understanding on how a low oil price affects capital markets, globally and regionally. Can Dubai expect the IPO wave to continue even if oil is at a historic low?

• Second, I want some enlightenment on the situation in Iran. The star of the show in 2014 was Hassan Rouhani, the country's president, who made a convincing case among most attendees for a thaw in the nuclear-related sanctions. Since then, however, the process seems to have stalled. What can the US secretary of state, John Kerry, do to break the logjam?

• Next, I'd like some guidance from European leaders – always a big contingent at Davos – on the euro-zone economy. When will Brussels and Frankfurt get their act together to drag the continent out of the doldrums that have persisted virtually unbroken since the financial crisis in 2009? There are some signs of positive action from the European Central Bank. Will it finally be enough this time?

• Two important countries for the UAE – as trading and financial partners – are Russia and China, and these are also well represented, traditionally, at the WEF. There are dark clouds over both economies that could seriously affect Arabian Gulf economics.

So I’d like to know if the Chinese financial system is resilient enough to withstand a crisis in its property sector, which is what many experts are predicting. I’d also like a definitive answer from the Russians on the damage their economy has suffered as a result of Ukraine-related sanctions and the oil price fall. How long they afford for it to continue?

• Finally I'd like to get some kind of explanation from our Swiss hosts as to what the country's central bank was thinking last week when it brought about the biggest shock in currency markets for many decades. The action has the capacity to unhinge foreign exchange markets, and is another uncertainty in a world already full enough with unpredictable "black swans". Can we expect the Swiss to now go back to their boring but efficient image please?

Those are the main points on which I'd like some Davos illumination. As usual, I'll be trailing the many Emirati businessmen and policymakers who attend the WEF and who I find are rather more talkative there than they often are at home.

It must be something to do with the altitude.

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