São Paulo – The CEO of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Michel Alaby, spoke this Tuesday (17th) about public and private Brazilian business incubators, in the second and final day of the 17th Arab Businessmen and Investors Conference in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates.
“I also explained the concept of Sebrae [the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service]”, he said, in a reference to the support the organization gives to small business development. Alaby spoke during the second panel of the day, whose topics were entrepreneurship and innovation in finances.
The executive also mentioned Brazil’ past experiences with production arrangements, which bring together in a single site smaller suppliers of a bigger company. As a case in point, he mentioned the aircraft manufacturing company Embraer, whose plants are surrounded by exclusive suppliers.
The main issue brought up by the speakers was lack of financing to entrepreneurs and to innovative projects in the Arab World. Nevertheless, they did discuss a few initiatives in their countries.
In the UAE, for instance, there is a state-run financing program for incubators that subsidizes as much as 80% of investment over a two-year period, after which businesses must stand on their own. This applies to the medical, tourism, information technology, and foreign trade sectors. There are also incentives in place for the establishment of production arrangements.
Other examples were given on the first panel of the day. In Jordan, the government grants non-refundable loans for innovation and development projects in tourism, agriculture and computers, and supplies credit for medical businesses to be set up.
In Egypt and across the Gulf, tax exemptions and as much as 75% financing of investment are available for game and mobile app developers. The credit has a 4-year grace period and is repayable in ten, at 4% interest per annum. In Bahrain, there is an entrepreneurship training center.
The third and final panel focused on education. The speakers stressed the importance of traditional teaching bankrolled by the State, as well as of technical teaching, which must be offered by the private initiative, for entrepreneurship and innovation.
“The big problem they mentioned is the fact that entrepreneurship financing abounds in the Gulf countries, but is scarce in other Arab countries,” Alaby remarked. The creation of a fund to finance projects in these nations was suggested, with guarantees given by the big sovereign funds in the Gulf, as well as a databank of projects throughout the region.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
