São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce promoted on Wednesday (06) talk Economic Scenarios for the Arab Countries in 2013. Financial and political figures and business perspectives for the nations in the Middle East and North Africa were discussed. The event took place at the institution’s offices, in the city of São Paulo, and also served as a platform for discussion of the demands of Brazilian companies interested in expanding their business in the region.
“It is very important to closely accompany these opportunities in the Arab countries to be able to organize our activities for this year,” said Marcelo Sallum, Arab Brazilian Chamber president, regarding the alignment of the organisation’s activities with the possibility of business in the region. Among the events for trade promotion that the organisation should participate in in 2013 are trade delegations, both in Brazil and in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The Arab market is of great importance for Brazilian meat exports. The Chamber has been our partner in recent years in this exchange of information. We count on the Arab Brazilian Chamber to maintain these markets open and to open new markets that aren’t yet,” said Estevão Carvalho, technical assistant at the Brazilian Beef Industry and Exporters Association (Abiec), who was in the audience.
Michel Alaby, the director general at the organisation, presented sceneries and opportunities in markets that are already traditional in the region, like the United Arab Emirates, and also pointed out sites with business yet to be explored. “The region of Kurdistan, in Iraq, has five million inhabitants and aims to come closer and closer to Brazil, buying products straight from here,” he revealed.
“The idea of bringing the Chamber closer is to get support to do good business in the region,” explained José Fiosi, export manager at Fanem, a maker of neonatal products. “We already have distributors in practically all countries, but we also have some problems, like currency exchange, forms of receiving a letters of credit. The Chamber always provides us with assistance in the documentation necessary to export,” says the executive.
Laura Gomes, export manager at Biolab, a maker of pharmaceutical and dermatological products, said that her company is starting a process for registration of medication to export to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and counts on the support of the Arab Brazilian Chamber to start business in the region.
“Market information, promoting business roundtables, technical talks turned to registration. This is the kind of support we hope for, mainly with regard to business roundtables, and I feel this is a very important part,” said the executive.
To Dario Chemerinski, executive of the food division at Global Resources, a company that provides international trade assistance, bringing together suppliers and distributors from different countries, the Arab Brazilian Chamber operates as an organisation that is “complementary and participates” in his company’s business.
“The Chamber’s team is helping find suppliers interested in entering new markets and is also providing support to exporter companies as well as contacts in Brazil to organisations in other nations,” he said.
*Translated by Mark Ament
