has been to allow for foreign ownership , so when John Defterios met up with her , he began by asking her about her upcoming strategy . Sheikha Lubna : We are looking with scrutiny at the companies a lot at the moment and we have several sectors . We will evaluate each sector , from the service side , finance , accounting . And any sector that we believe we need further development in terms of economic growth , then we will focus on that : on increasing the acquisition or the ownership of the foreign company . Defterios : If you look at the Middle East , specifically within this Gulf region , it 's quite a radical change to open up specific sectors to majority foreign ownership . Is this society in the region ready for this move ? Sheikha Lubna : Interestingly , the United Arab Emirates is host to 80 percent of its population coming from outside . We host 200 nationalities , so for us , the contribution to the economy has already started over 15 years ago with the existence of the expatriate community . So in many ways I think the openness
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Not only is Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi the first woman to hold a ministerial post in the United Arab Emirates , the first female minister of economy in the Gulf , and the first to start a Middle Eastern BB marketplace , but she 's also the first minister - anywhere in the world - to launch her own perfume line . Member of Sharjah royal family and one of Forbes ' 100 most powerful women , Sheikha Lubna took the post of minister for economy and planning of United Arab Emirates in 2004 . Her background is in IT and before the government appointment worked at the Dubai Ports Authority where she gained the `` Distinguished Government Employee Award '' in 1999 for developing a documentation system that reduced cargo turnaround from one hour to ten minutes . In 2000 , Sheikha Lubna founded Tejari , the first Middle Eastern business-to-business marketplace . As a result of Tejari -LRB- Arabic for commerce -RRB- 70 percent of Dubai 's government purchases are made online , while only 30 percent of bureaucrats were web-literate before its launch . One of the cornerstones of Sheikha Lubna 's work