Aziz along with renowned experts was addressing 2012 Jeddah Economic Forum which discussed future prospects in light of interconnectedness of world economies and room for expansion, powered by demographics, domestic and foreign investment within these economies.

“You can’t work in isolation and the concept of decoupling simply does not exist, especially because of trade flow and investment flow,” he said.

"The mature economies have not handled themselves as well as they should and that there were lessons to be learned," Shaukat  Aziz said, adding, that there were still many challenges in the mature economies - for example in the United States that showed a lack of structural reform, something normally associated with emerging economies.

“Events have shown that if you do not adapt and don’t reform, even mature economies can get into trouble. US is trying to improve its growth rate, but point is this could have been avoided,” he added.