São Paulo – Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade informed this Tuesday (30th) that the federal government has won a prize in Dubai for South America’s best investment attraction project in 2012. The award was accepted by the ministry’s Trade and Services secretary Humberto Ribeiro on the first day of the 3rd Annual Investment Meeting, which will continue until May 2nd in the United Arab Emirates.
According to the ministry, the country won the prize because it has attracted a new manufacturing plant, the automaker Fiat’s second in the country, currently under construction in Pernambuco. Inauguration is due in 2014 and a R$ 4 billion (US$ 1.99 billion) investment has been announced.
This Tuesday, government officials, businessmen, multilateral organizations, university professors and analysts have begun discussing the future of the world economy, global foreign direct investment flows, and the development of emerging countries, on the first day of the forum in Dubai. Brazil is participating with a 60-strong delegation, including the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce CEO Michel Alaby.
The goal of the Brazilian mission is to showcase investment opportunities. According to Alaby, Bernardo Figueiredo, the chairman of the Planning and Logistics Company (EPL, in the Portuguese acronym), a state-owned company established recently to plan out the development of Brazil’s transport infrastructure, presented the second edition of the Catálogo de Oportunidades para Investimentos no Brasil (Catalogue of Investment Opportunities in Brazil), a compilation of the main projects which are open to foreign investors in the country. The survey includes information provided by several federal and state government organizations.
The conference runs parallel to a fair, which was opened by the United Arab Emirates’ vice president and ruler of Dubai, Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex) has a booth showcasing projects in Brazil.
The delegation includes delegates from several Brazilian companies and government organizations that are interested in attracting foreign capital. The minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Fernando Pimentel, was scheduled to head the mission but cancelled his trip. The chairman of Apex, Maurício Borges, is in charge.
The conference was opened by the Emirati minister of Economy, Sultan Al Mansouri, who spoke to an audience of 400 people, according to Alaby. The minister said global foreign direct investment flows (FDI) have declined after having peaked at US$ 2 trillion in 2007. Thus, countries are faced with the challenge of reinventing their strategies to attract FDI by minimising red tape and implementing more dynamic processes.
Specifically with regard to the Arab countries, he said the main concern of investment attraction policies must be to create jobs and guaranteeing political and legal stability to investors.
The first panel of the day discussed the future of FDI flows and their impact on emerging markets; the second panel was about policies for increasing said flows; and the third panel focused on the role of translational companies in developing countries, especially in essential sectors such as commodities.
The debates featured the likes of Morocco’s minister of Transport, Abdelaziz Rebbah, Romania’s minister of Economy, Varujan Vosganian, the executive director of Paris’ International Trade Centre, Patricia Francis, the CEO of the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization (WTO), Taleb Rifai, the executive secretary to the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, Carlos Lopes, the assistant secretary general to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), Petko Draganov, among others.
Alaby attended meetings with the investment promotion director of Yemen’s General Investment Authority, Hussein Yahya, who is interested in showcasing, in Brazil, the existing investment opportunities in his country; the governor of Brazil’s Roraima state, José de Anchieta Jr., who wishes to bring the grain- and livestock-producing state closer to Arab countries; the vice-governor of Brazil’s Alagoas state, José Thomaz Nonô, who wants to garner support to increasing the state’s trade with the Arab World; and the EPL chairman, with whom he discussed seeking investors to infrastructure projects in Brazil.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
