Alexandre Rocha*
São Paulo – The Mercosur, the customs union between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman, are going to return to free trade negotiations at the end of the month. The members of the joint committee, established by the framework agreement signed between both parties during the Summit of South American – Arab Countries in May, are going to meet on November 26 and 27 in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
According to sources at the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty), the topics to be discussed include "methods and modalities" and a work schedule. That is, the diplomats are going to define, among other things, the coverage that the treaty will have, what will be contemplated and what will remain out of the negotiations.
To Brazil the agreement should include access to the goods, services and investment markets. The proposal, however, has not yet been discussed in the scope of the Mercosur, scheduled for this and next week. The next business roundtable will take place in one of the countries of the South American block in the beginning of 2006.
The Brazilian delegation should count on the presence of two of the main names in current Brazilian diplomacy: the director of the Trade Promotion Department at the Itamaraty, Mario Vilalva, and the director of the Foreign Negotiations Department, Régis Arslanian.
Business
And efforts will not only be made in diplomatic negotiations. The Ministry of Foreign Relations is going to take advantage of the opportunity to promote a trade mission to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. According to Rodrigo Santos, of the Trade Promotion department, around 15 company and organization representatives should be included in the delegation.
Among the institutions, according to Santos, are construction companies Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht, the Bank of Brazil (BB), trading company Comexport, Granimex, in the granite and marble sector and Docol, a maker of taps, mixers, showers and bathroom fittings. The Itamaraty also wants to take representatives of the Ministry of Health to discuss the transfer of technology in the area of vaccines, of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and of Brazilian oil giant Petrobras.
"This mission will be the continuation of a previous one, in February," stated Santos. "We are going to take companies that already have interests identified in the region," he added.
Part of the delegation is going to be in the Emirates between November 19 and 21. Apart from private business meetings and a visit to the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI), the idea, according to Santos, is also to see the end of the Big5 Show, the largest fair in the civil construction sector in the Middle East, scheduled for November 16 to 20. The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce will have a stand at the fair, which will include seven exhibitors from Brazil.
The delegation will leave to Riyadh on the 21st itself. The agenda, which is still being finalized, forecasts, apart from a meeting with the secretary general of the GCC, Abdul Rahman Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, visits to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia), to the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources, to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, to the head of the Industrial Development Fund, to the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as business meetings.
"The idea is to show that we want to develop business there, not only to knock on the door with a pan in our hands saying we want investment in Brazil," said Santos. "We want to develop business there and attract attention to business here," he added. That is why the presence of banks like the BB and the BNDES is so important, to show that, apart from wanting to sell, Brazil has financial capacity to lever various businesses.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are, respectively, the first and third destinations for Brazilian products in the Arab world. Between January and October, Brazilian exports to the Saudi market totalled US$ 935.8 million, and to the Emirates, US$ 588.3 million.
Saudi Arabia is also the second main Brazilian supplier in the region, with over US$ 1 billion sold in the first ten months of the year, losing only to Algeria.
*Translated by Mark Ament
