São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce wants to organize a trade mission to North Africa in the first half of 2015. The matter was discussed this Tuesday (26), in Cairo, in a meeting between the Brazilian organization’s CEO, Michel Alaby, and the secretary general of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, Alaa Ezz.
“We said we plan to organize a Brazilian export trade mission to Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, and we asked if we could count on the federation’s support,” said Alaby, who was accompanied by the Arab Chamber’s Government Relations manager, Tamer Mansour. The federation has around 4,000 members.
According to Alaby, the Egyptian organization’s executive has not only offered support to the mission but also to supply contacts for matchmaking. Alaa Ezz is a member of the Association of the Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce and Industry, which includes Moroccan and Algerian organizations, so their support can extend beyond Egyptian borders.
Alaby has also said the Arab Brazilian Chamber wants to organize a Buyer Project in Brazil for Egyptian importers. “I proposed they could help us identify importers of non-traditional sectors, and he is to send us which sectors would be interested in importing [from Brazil] so we can tailor the event to their (the Egyptians’) needs,” he pointed out.
Ezz has suggested, according to Alaby, that each Egyptian businessman could have ten to twelve meetings with Brazilian companies and, if possible, the schedule should include technical visits to the industrial facilities. “We will be in close contact to discuss a joint work schedule between the two organizations,” said the CEO of the Arab Brazilian Chamber.
Agriculture
Alaby and Mansour also had a meeting with representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). They discussed Brazilian projects to fight hunger and poverty, such as the Bolsa Família program (a social welfare program to assist low-income families) and the program for supporting small-scale farmers; the organisation of cooperatives in the country, the role of the private sector in the agricultural sector, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and quinoa farming in South America.
The FAO representative in North Africa, Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, the organisation’s representative in Egypt, Pasquale Steduto, the national project manager, Mahmoud Abdelnabby, and the senior project coordinator, Kayan Jaff, participated in the meeting.
This Tuesday, the Brazilian delegation led by the Agriculture minister, Neri Geller, now joined by Alaby and Mansour, arrived in Cairo. From Wednesday (27th) on, the group will have a number of meetings with local authorities and executives. Lifting the Egyptian embargo on imports of beef from the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and trying to change the system of cargo-by-cargo poultry inspection introduced this year by the Arab country are among the goals of the mission.
Previously, the delegation visited Iran and successfully negotiated the lifting of the embargo on beef imported from Mato Grosso.
*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça
