Training expenditure in the middle east during recession and slowdown

For the last one month I had been tracking almost all the leading corporations of the UAE like Emmar, Dubai world, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Dubai Islamic bank, Aldaar, Burj-Al-Arab,Emirates and Air Arabia to name a few, while training my students who represent different organizations across sectors.Recession is cascading all across and all the economies are affected in one way or the other.However, the smart corporations across the globe and few of them I observed here in UAE gave me the belief that you cannot invoke cost cutting in a very way especially when its related to brand building and employee development.In fact my reading said that the smart companies are continuing if not increasing their training related expenditure as they realize its only a matter of time after which things would return back to normalcy.Its that phase of the business cycle where you continue with the training and development plan which otherwise is cut short as preferance is given to other functional areas of management which are related with the departments considered to be the revenue spinners.
Smart companies therefore nurture and groom their soldiers(read employees) during the period of slowdown, so that they can make the right tactical moves by becoming battle ready, once the skies clear up in the economical landscape.