São Paulo – Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce president Rubens Hannun and his adviser on Strategic Affairs, Tamer Mansour, were in Syria from September 15 to 17 as part of a mission to the Levant region, which also included Lebanon and Jordan. During the trip, they met with local authorities and businesspersons, in a bid to enhance Brazil-Syria ties and to identify business opportunities. The schedule in Syria was organized by the Arab Chamber’s director Sami Roumieh.
The first meeting was in Syria with the director of the country’s investment promotion agency, Median Ali Diab. “Diab asked us to translate Syria’s investment law into Portuguese and to make it available on the Arab Chamber’s website for Brazilian companies,” said Mansour. The advisor said that no date has been set yet for the translation to go online.
Mansour said that in a meeting with the minister of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Abdullah Al Gharbi, the minister suggested an agreement between the minister and the Arab Chamber aiming to promote trade and closer ties between Brazilian and Syrian companies, with a priority to the sugar and beef sectors, since there’s a keen interest in increasing trade of these products from Brazil to Syria.
The executives also attended a meeting with the minister of Oil and Mineral Resources, Ali Soulaiman Ghanem. “The minister underscored that Brazil is one of Syria’s friends, [a country] that never closed the embassy in the country, and this was, in fact, the tone taken by all the ministers,” said Mansour. According to the Arab Chamber’s advisor, Ghanem said that this is the moment of reestablishing and resuming oil production in Syria to pre-war levels, and emphasized that are many opportunities for Brazilian companies to take part in bidding rounds in the country, especially in the shale oil sector, and also to companies offering services and expertise in many other areas. Ghanem suggested a cooperation agreement between Syria and Brazil in the training, skills development and research area.
The minister of Social Affairs and Labor, Rima Kadri, also met the Arab Chamber’s representatives and praised the organization – she visited the Arab Chamber twice, in 2004 and 2010. “Kadri asked us to push for a cooperation agreement for the knowledge sharing in the social and labor areas, since Brazil is considered a reference of labor legislation and social programs such as Minha Casa, Minha Vida,” added Mansour.
Hannun and Mansour also visited the Damascus International Fair, which, in its 60th edition, had 500,000 visitors in its second-to-last day alone, from over 40 countries. “The fair broke all records of visitors, area, number of stands, and this shows the interest and trust that Syria is getting from the global market,” said Hannun (pictured above). The Damascus Fairs is considered “the window to the world of the Syrian economy.” The expo returned in 2017 after a 5 years hiatus caused by the civil war.
Mansour said that it was possible to sense the importance of the event, and that many business meetings took place. Five Brazilian companies, from such fields as cosmetics (Vitta Gold) and electrical products (Lorenzetti, showers manufacturer), attended the fair, with two of them sending representatives and three with product samples. “The companies in those two sectors signed deals during the fair; in fact, Vitta Gold, the cosmetics brand, has a local representative with good sales numbers,” said Mansour.
Check out two more news features on Syria here and here.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
