São Paulo – The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Dubai Chamber) was a participant in the 4th edition of the Global Agribusiness Forum, on Monday (23) and Tuesday (24), at the Sheraton WTC hotel, in São Paulo. For the first time, the organization had a stand at the event. Omar Khan (picture above), Director of International Offices, talked about the importance of the emirate’s relations with Brazil, and the challenges and opportunities in the agricultural sector. “It’s very encouraging to partake in this event, we saw people from many countries, such as India, Australia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and United States, so there’s lot of information on global agriculture and that’s very relevant to us since 85% of the emirate’s food is imported,” he said to ANBA this Tuesday.
According to Khan, Latin America and Brazil are important because they’re very advanced in the agricultural sector, but he believes there’s a logistics challenge due to the distance to the Middle East. “Dubai is very good when it comes to logistics, facilitation and transportation and we’re always interested in getting to know how we can be relevant in this so important sector, for both trade and food security,” he said.
On Monday, the director was a speaker in a panel on the private sector in agribusiness and said that the goal of the Dubai Chamber is to encourage the United Arab Emirates companies to come to Brazil and for Brazilian companies to use Dubai as a business facilitation center. “It’s a very interesting hub to Brazil because, if companies want to reach China or Africa, Dubai would be an excellent place to do business, for its connectivity and for us being able to help with the language and cultural barriers and the geographical distance,” he added.
Regarding consumption, Khan said that the UAE isn’t a large country in population – around eight million –, but he emphasized that the country welcomes many tourists and that Latin America is an important player because the countries in the Arab Gulf bought USD 4.3 billion worth of agricultural products from the region (2016 data), which accounts to 9% of the total imported in agriculture in the year. “There’s room for growth, there are many different opportunities, especially to small and medium-sized companies.”
The director advised Brazilian companies to focus on selling more end products and to increase their penetration in the international market, especially in the Middle East. “Of course, this is tougher than selling a commodity, you need to visit markets, check what people think of your product, adapt to each culture and, that way, build your brand and achieve a higher profit margin,” he said. In this context, the role of the Dubai Chamber would be of connecting the brand or company to these markets, to promote, organize events and help the business owner to enter this new market.
Stand
The purpose of having a stand in the agricultural event is “like flying a flag and declaring: we’re here,” according to Khan. “Our focus is on helping our companies to come here and to do this we have to understand the market, understand the challenges and gaps to, based on that, hold an event, a research, and get to know how we can improve this relation and encourage business,” he said. The Dubai Chamber has been in Brazil since April 2017 and has offices in countries such as Argentina, China, India and Panama.
“We also want to promote Dubai and take the business owners from here to get to know better our emirate; many people hold an image that the Middle East is dangerous, and I believe that these limiting beliefs and stereotypes can drive a business to failure so, what we want to do here is to avoid this and help both sides to do business,” stated the director.
Khan admitted that long-distance relations aren’t easy. “That’s why we have an office here and are at this event, to keep relations alive, this is very important to us and we want our companies also to get to know Brazil better to decide to come here more,” he concluded.
The Global Agribusiness Forum began on Monday and ended this Tuesday afternoon. The event is organized by Datagro, an agricultural consulting firm, and by the Brazilian Rural Society, the representative of the agricultural sector in Brazil, among other sector associations.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
