Arab states agreed to form a $2bn fund to help small businesses through the credit crunch, one of the few concrete initiatives to emerge from an economic summit in Kuwait on Tuesday.
Mohammed Al Sabah, Kuwait”s foreign minister, told reporters at a press conference that the fund, to be managed by the Arab Development Fund, would include a microfinance programme to extend credit to cottage industries and help reduce unemployment in the Arab world.
"It”s already been proved that economic activity is the best way to control poverty," he said at the end of the two-day Arab Economic, Social and Development Summit in Kuwait.
More than a third of the Arab world, about 100m people, live on less than $2 a day.
The summit was overshadowed by differences over a unified Arab response to the Israeli assault on Gaza and reconstruction efforts for the devastated coastal strip.
Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said the summit had agreed that economic issues had to move forward in the face of political differences between the 22 member states.
He said the group would move forward with pan-Arab rail and electricity networks, while also seeking to implement an Arab customs union by 2015.
Unifying customs would ease the movement of trade, goods and people, helping to boost intra-Arab trade and investment, which lags behind other economic blocs.