São Paulo – The governor of the state of Ceará, Camilo Santana (PT), will visit this month the Sohar port, in Oman, and a desalinization plant at the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“The Port of Sohar is a joint-venture between the Sultanate of Oman and the Port of Rotterdam (in Holland). The Ceará state government is signing a protocol of intentions with the Rotterdam port. So, we want to see the operation and the association matters [between the Omani and Dutch ports]. There is a similarity that is worth knowing,” said Antonio Balhmann, advisor on Foreign Affairs of Ceará state government, in an interview with ANBA.
Balhmann will be part of the Ceará delegation that will visit the two Arab countries. In addition to him and the governor, Janaina Farias, from the governor’s cabinet, and Bruno Monte, executive advisor on Foreign Affairs, will also make the trip.
The visit to the Sohar port takes place on January 15. According to Balhmann, another element worth getting to know by the mission from Ceará is the free zone within the Omani port. The advisor points out that the Pecém port, in Ceará, also has a free zone, in this case called an Export Processing Zone (ZPE, in the Portuguese acronym).
The ZPE in Ceará will also be discussed by the state delegation in Iran, a non-Arab country in the Middle East. There, the governor should meet with the minister of Oil and with the president of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). “ZPE has a large project of oil refinery. The purpose [of the meetings] is to work the idea of Iranian companies to take part in the oil refinery project [in Pecém],” said Balhmann.
On January 18, the Ceará government’s mission will visit the desalinization plant owned by Italian company Fisia Italimpianti in Dubai. “We will get to know operation, distribution and volume details,” said Balhmann. According to the advisor, the desalinization process interests the Ceará government as a “complimentary” option to the supply of drinking water in the state, especially in the capital Fortaleza. “We need not to rely only of the supply of large reservoirs,” he underscored.
The mission from the Ceará state will also visit China, where it will seek the support for a public aquarium project in the state.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
