São Paulo – Representatives of the Arab-foreign chambers of commerce, among them the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, met on Thursday and Friday last week in Beirut, Lebanon, to exchange experiences and expand cooperation between the organisations.
According to the secretary general at the Arab Brazilian Chamber, Michel Alaby, who participated in the meeting at the offices of the General Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture for Arab Countries, the organisations decided to promote meetings every six months to coordinate their activities and to prepare quarterly reports of their trade promotion and investment activities.
To the president of the General Union, Lebanese banker Adnan Kassar, the meeting is important to bring closer the economies of the Arab and Western nations. Alaby and Arab Brazilian Chamber director Mustapha Abdouni presented a document detailing the different initiatives of organisations in this respect.
According to Alaby, the participants demonstrated special interest in Brazilian direct investment in the Arab world and vice versa. He mentioned, for example, the case of Randon, a maker of road equipment that has an assembly line in Algeria and Marcopolo, a maker of bus bodies, that this year should inaugurate a factory in Egypt in partnership with a local company. Business like this involves transfer of technology, something that Kassar said the chambers must work on.
The secretary general at the General Union, Emad Shehab, mentioned some points of the Arab Brazilian Chamber report as examples of the support that organisations must provide. He spoke about the visits of the ministers of Industry and Trade of Egypt, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, and of the king of Jordan, Abdullah II, to Brazil last year. Both travelled in the company of delegations of businessmen and had significant parts of their agendas organized by the Arab Brazilian Chamber.
Other examples were the support that the institution gives to Arab businessmen who travel to participate in business fairs in Brazil, and the file of information regarding Brazilian and Arab importers and exporters that the organisation has, which may be researched to find business partners.
Alaby added that the organisations decided to send their event schedules for 2009 to the General Union, with the objective of establishing a consolidated calendar to be distributed to all chambers.
Alaby also spoke about the South America-Arab Countries Business Forum to take place in Doha, Qatar, prior to the second Summit of South American and Arab Countries (Aspa), scheduled for early April. He asked for support of the General Union in the promotion of the conference.
Those present also included the representatives of the Arab Chambers in Germany, Argentina, Belgium and Luxemburg, France, England, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Greece, Austria, Australia and the United States, as well as the board of the General Union, which includes members of the organisations in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and also of the League of Arab States.
*Translated by Mark Ament
