São Paulo – The Sultanate of Oman wants to expand mutual trade and investments with Brazil. The minister of Industry and Trade of the Gulf nation, Ali Al Sunaidy, said this Wednesday (3) in São Paulo that his country plans to develop five sectors that are considered priorities in the next five years and to do so it needs to guarantee the supply of its production chain and place its products in the global market.
“We have, for instance, a deficit of meat, especially, white meat, and we want to see if we can invest in this area”, he said at the opening of the business matchmaking between Brazilian and Omani companies at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. Sunaidy is in Brazil together with business owners and representatives of government bodies from the Arab country.
The five priority sectors are processing of basic goods or semi-finished products – with an emphasis on the food industry, tourism, mining, logistics, fisheries and aquaculture.
In the case of poultry, Sunaidy said that Oman produces only 25% of what it consumes, but it wants to increase this percentage to 70% in the future, therefore the country wants to attract Brazilian companies to establish themselves there and process or distribute food. “But we will never be self-sufficient”, said Sunaidy in an interview to ANBA, making it clear that the country will always offer a market for imported products.
The poultry example also holds true for the food industry in general. Omanis are also interested in investing in Brazilian production, expanding imports and becoming familiar with Brazilian technology in the area. “We have scant water resources”, said the minister in his interview to ANBA. In this sense, there’s a concern in guaranteeing the food security of the population. Other products that Oman has a need to import and plans to negotiate in Brazil are maize, soy, wheat, barley and animal feed.
Investments
Regarding investments, Brazil and Oman are not unknown to each other. The Brazilian mining company Vale has an iron ore pellet plant at the Sohar Port, in the Gulf country, and the State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), Oman’s sovereign fund, has “indirect” investments in property and infrastructure funds in Brazil, according to its Investments director, Mulham Al Jarf, who is part of the delegation.
“The fund has USD 25 billion in assets in several countries, and is trying to make investments here”, declared the minister. According to him, besides the shares it already has in funds in BRazil, SGRF is negotiating an investment in the Brazilian port sector in a partnership with the Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The promotion of investments will even be one of the topics of the first meeting of the Brazil-Oman Bilateral Joint Commission, which will take place this Wednesday (4) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) in Brasília, with the participation of Sunaidy and his delegation. According to the director of Itamaraty’s Department of Trade Promotion and Investments, Rodrigo Azeredo, who attended the event at the Arab Chamber, the signing of a memorandum of investments promotion between the two governments is expected, with the assembly of a work group with representatives of the public and private sectors from both countries.
“This group will identify concrete investments opportunities from both sides, funding options, that is, operational issues”, said Azeredo. Simultaneously with this work, the two countries will negotiate a cooperation and investment facilitation agreement (CIFA). Brazil already sent a draft to the Omani government, and the Omani should present their counterproposal at the Joint Commission. This type of agreement was launched by the Brazilian government and, according to Azeredo, is “more flexible” than the traditional treaties of protection and promotion of investments.
Omanis also have an interest in negotiating an agreement to avoid double taxation in income taxes. Azeredo explained that this type of treaty is assessed “case by case” by the Ministry of Finance and by the Federal Revenue Office.
Representatives of the ports of Sohar, Salalah and Duqm, and of companies in the food, energy and marble sectors are all part of the delegation. Each of those ports specializes in a different type of operation, with Sohar being the food industry, Duqm the petrochemical industry, and Salalah with containers.
In addition to their domestic demand, the Omanis bet on the localization of their country to attract the attention of foreign companies, offering incentives so industrial projects and distribution centers intended to serve other nations in the Gulf and in Asia can be established there. One of the allurements now is Iran, sanctions on which have been lifted after its signing of a treaty with global powers on its nuclear program.
From the Brazilian side, at least representatives of 33 companies and sector organizations attended the event. The president of the Arab Chamber, Marcelo Sallum, mentioned them all by name. “They are companies interested in two-way trade”, he pointed out. In other words, they are interested in exporting and importing.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
