São Paulo – A webinar in a live stream marathon hosted by Smart City Expo Curitiba this Thursday (25) featured Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce secretary-general Tamer Mansour (pictured above). He discussed how to foster trade between countries in times of social distancing, working from home, and restrictions on travel. The webinar’s host was iCities director and cofounder Beto Marcelino.
iCities is the company responsible for bringing Smart City Expo to Brazil. Since 2018, it hosts Smart City Expo Curitiba, featuring specialists from around the world. The third edition was slated for last March and 10,000 people were expected to attend. The event has been postponed until December, and the live streams are a solution to keep providing content.
Mansour discussed Brazil’s relations with the Arab countries. “In the early 2000s Brazil began to come up in the global scenario as a very strong partner of countries that need food products, agricultural products. That’s where relations with the Arab world began, with demand being particularly strong in agriculture, with products to address food security issues,” he said. He remarked that the Arab countries combined are currently the third biggest trading partner of Brazil’s, the second biggest in imports of farm products from Brazil, and the biggest importer of animal-based protein products.
Aside from ores, Brazil’s trade with Arab countries basically consists of sugar, poultry and beef, maize, soy, and cereals, according to Mansour. “And so over the last few years it began to dawn on us that Brazil is so strong and so big that it cannot focus in commodities alone,” he argued. “We need to consider working with value-added products. There is a whole world we can explore besides chicken, sugar and maize,” he said.
Smart cities
Marcelino mentioned smart cities, including ones in the Arab world – Dubai, UAE; Casablanca, Morocco; and Doha, Qatar. “Dubai won for its use of blockchain in public administration, which is pure technology. We have three cities in the Arab world. There’s a lot to work on, like these big cities that will surely attract businesspeople from all over the world,” he said.
Click here to watch the full live stream.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
