São Paulo – The Arab ambassadors in Brazil are promoting on Thursday (16) and Friday (17) a mission to Rio Grande do Sul, with the goal of finding opportunities for partnerships, business and investment between their countries and the state. Rio Grande do Sul is the fourth main Brazilin exporter to the Arab world, with US$ 327 million in sales to the region from January to March this year and US$ 1.3 billion last year, according to figures supplied by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.
"Rio Grande do Sul is an important state due to its economic capacity. We are looking for investment opportunities and partnerships," said the Palestinian ambassador and dean of the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Brazil, Ibrahim Alzeben. The mission is sponsored by the Council and the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, to be represented by president Marcelo Sallum, CEO Michel Alaby, and Institutional Relations director Silvio Junior Abdallah.
The Council of Arab Ambassadors usually promotes missions to states to strengthen ties between the different regions of Brazil and their countries. This year, similar trips have already been promoted to Goiás, in the Midwest, and São Paulo, in the Southeast. To Rio Grande do Sul, the last mission was in 2011. Alzeben also points out that there is Rio Grande do Sul state interest in generating closer ties with the Arab world, a process that even included a trip by state governor Tarso Genro to Palestine less than one month ago.
Scheduled for the trip to Rio Grande do Sul are meetings with the mayor of state capital Porto Alegre, José Fortunati, and with state governor Genro. There will also be a seminar at the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (FIERGS), which will include the presence of the organisation’s president, Hector Müller. In addition to these commitments in Porto Alegre, there will be a visit to the Marcopolo plant in Caxias do Sul, and to the city of Gramado. Marcopolo is a bus manufacturer and has operations in Egypt, where it has a joint venture in the assembly of vehicles.
According to Alaby, the mission aims to present the state of Rio Grande do Sul and its opportunities to the Arab ambassadors and also the business opportunities in the Arab world to entrepreneurs and authorities in the state. The CEO pointed out that there is already commercial exchange between the two regions in sectors like food and tobacco, which Rio Grande do Sul sells to North Africa and the Gulf, and fertilizer and oil, which are provided by the Arabs to Rio Grande do Sul. But the basket, adds Alaby, may be extended to areas like oil and dates, which the Arabs produce, or mechanical metalworks, furniture and footwear, products that the southernmost Brazilian state manufactures and exports.
Council
Apart from dean Alzeben, the delegation to Rio Grande do Sul also includes the ambassadors of Sudan, Awad Abd Elghani Elnaim Elkarim; Kuwait, Yousef A. Abdulsamad; Algeria, Djamel Eddine Bennaoum Omar; Oman, Khalid Salim Al Jaradi; Qatar, Mohamed Ahmed Hassan Alhayki; Egypt, Hossameldin Mohamed Zaki Ibrahim; Lebanon, Joseph Sayah; Morocco, Larbi Moukhariq; Tunisia, Sabri Bachtobji; and the League of Arab States, Bachar Yaghi.
Also on the delegation are the business attachés of the embassies of Jordan, Mamdouh Hasan Ali Saraireh; Libya, Mohamed Khalifa Abubdieda; Iraq, Oday Hatim Mohammed; Mauritania, Ould Ahmed Mahmoud Ethmane, the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed Bin Jasim Bin Khalfan, and Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Aleisa.
*Translated by Mark Ament