IMF boss tells Gulf countries to ‘get your Airbus’

• Kristalina Georgieva is IMF MD
• Speaking at the World Governments Summit
• Airbus has international owners

Global success increasingly depends on cooperation, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Tuesday, urging Gulf countries to deepen regional coordination to operate effectively in the worldwide economy.

“What I know is that it makes a huge difference in how you interact with and integrate your economies,” she said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

“If you want to compete in the world we are in today and we will be in tomorrow, you have to overcome differences and you have to come up with that sense of unity, of purpose,” said Georgieva.

Georgieva pointed to the example of Airbus, which is the largest aeronautics and space company in Europe. It is 80 percent owned by the German-French-Spanish European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, with the remainder owned by Britain’s BAE Systems.

“When Europe came up with Airbus, it did something fabulous,” she said. “It created a very potent competitor to Boeing. Now every second aircraft on this planet comes from Europe.

“So to the Gulf, get your Airbus.”

The planemaker’s net income rose by 46 percent for the first nine months of 2025 to €2.6 billion ($3 billion) compared to the same period in 2024. Net profits for the third quarter of 2025 alone grew by 14 percent to €1.1 billion. 

The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – already work closely on trade, with bloc-wide deals struck with a variety of countries including Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand.

“I think the Gulf has already demonstrated a trading capacity to do so,” said Georgieva.

Further reading:

• New Zealand agrees free-trade deal with GCC
• UK finance minister praises GCC free trade talks
• EU and GCC officials aim to resume FTA negotiations

Negotiations over similar deals with the UK and European Union are continuing, while the finishing touches are being put to a deal with India. Talks have also begun with Turkey.

Georgieva also suggested the six countries could come together to create a joint project in artificial intelligence.

According to a report from Emirates NBD, the GCC has “established itself as a critical destination for global AI infrastructure investment”. The region attracted over $40 billion in confirmed hyperscaler commitments between 2023 to 2025, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia together accounting for over 75 percent of the GCC’s existing data centre rack capacity.

The IMF chief said the Gulf should not be positioning itself “as a peripheral market but as a core component of global AI infrastructure deployment through 2030”.