São Paulo – The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out changes to Brazil-Arab relations, Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce secretary-general and CEO Tamer Mansour said on Wednesday (8) in a virtual meeting hosted by the Foreign Affairs Professionals Association (APRI), the APRI Meet. The association is hosting a series of online meetings, and the Arab countries were addressed in the last conference.
“These relations with the Arab world are starting to change due to the times of COVID-19 we are going through,” Mansour told the audience, which consisted of Foreign Relations and Foreign Trade professionals. Among these changes, Mansour mentioned the possibility of Brazil supplying higher value-added products to the region, due to the demands that have arisen in the pandemic.
The secretary-general said that exporting value-added items to Arabs has become a rallying point for the Arab Chamber. He mentioned the Brazilian meat industry, which already exports to the Arabs but has the chance to send a variety of noble cuts or products with new packages, certifications and traceability. He pointed out that new sale channels have even been created for this product.
Mansour mentioned other changes in the world that impact these relations, such as remote working, online sales, and videocall meetings.
The Arab Chamber has hosted a series of virtual conferences addressing Brazil-Arab relations and topics that impact them, intensified the online spread of information that help bringing the two regions together, sped up the digital certification process, and launched the Lab CCAB, a lab for startups involving Brazilians and Arabs and modern business models.
The secretary-general addressed these and other topics, including Arab investment funds, the figures involved in the trade between the two regions, the demographics of the Arab countries, the perception the Arabs have of Brazilians and vice versa, and answered questions from the participants regarding educational interchange, opportunities in free zones and other topics.
The meeting was started by APRI communication director Magda Dias and moderated by APRI chairman Fabio Roberto Cordeiro. Cordeiro said that he follows the Arab Chamber’s work and praised its performance in the pandemic.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
