São Paulo – The Brazil-Tunisia Business Council will be reactivated and resume its activities by next month. This Thursday (16th), representatives of the Brazilian side of the organization had a meeting at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce to define the goals and the operation method of the group. The meeting with the Tunisian members of the council for the reformulation will take place on May 5th, in São Paulo.
“The council was founded in 2002. With the Arab Spring, it stopped for a while because everything changed over there, including our contacts”, explained Rubens Hannun, vice-president of Foreign Trade of the Arab Chamber and Tunisia’s honorary consul in São Paulo. According to the executive, the talks between both sides were resumed in 2013, and now, with a new government already established in the Arab country, the council “regained strength for the reformulation”.
Hannun said that initially, the Brazilian side of the council will be formed by representatives of the tourism, industry, fertilizers, food and beverages, energy and pharmaceutical products sectors.
He says, however, that the composition of the council is still being developed and not yet closed to new participations. “The goal is to be agile and flexible”, he said, emphasizing that only representatives of sector entities can be part of it.
From the Tunisian side, the council will be formed by members of the agri-food, consultancy and tourism sectors and entities linked to the environment, meat trade, olive oil production and export and international trade in general.
The delegation that’s set to come to Brazil next month will be headed by Hassine Bouzid, former ambassador of Tunisia in Brazil. The visit of the Arab mission will happen within the context of the participation of Tunisian companies in the fair organized by the Supermarket Association of São Paulo State (Apas).
“The importance of the council is that it presents suggestions to the governments in order to eliminate the difficulties encountered in trade, investment, tourism and other areas. Besides, it should stimulate the extension of participation in fairs, exhibition and trade missions”, emphasized Michel Alaby, CEO of the Arab Chamber.
Alaby pointed out that trade is the “start” of the relations between the countries, and that these relations should be expanded with, for instance, the installation of industries from one country in the other and the use of these plants for product exports to neighboring countries.
The Arab Chamber’s CEO also said that Mercosur and Tunisia have a framework agreement in place that is advancing for negotiations of tariff and non-tariff barriers, preceding the signing of a free-trade agreement.
He reminded that the agreement is to be signed between the two countries’ governments, but that the private sector, through sector entities, can take their pleas to the governments for them to be taken into account in the time of negotiations.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
