São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce will hold, on February 6, 2018, in São Paulo, the Brazil-Arab Countries Economic Forum, to discuss topics such as trade, investments, food security, energy, tourism, innovation and logistics, and to gather entrepreneurs from both regions. The initiative has the support of the Union of Arab Chambers and the Arab League.
The date was confirmed in meetings which the CEO of the Arab Chamber, Michel Alaby, attended this week at the Union’s and Arab League’s headquarters, in Beirut and Cairo, respectively. The union is a corporate arm of the League and the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce is a member.
Besides the Forum, a Brazil-Jordan corporate event and a meeting of CEOs of the Arab-Foreign Joint Chambers are scheduled. The idea to organize these events came up in a meeting that the president of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, Rubens Hannun, had with the Union’s president, Nael Al Kabariti, in Amman, Jordan, in September. Kabariti is also president of the Jordan Chamber of Commerce.
In Beirut, Alaby met with the Union’s CEO, Khaled Hanafy, and the director responsible for the Arab-Foreign Joint Chambers, Hoda Katchan. In addition to the forum’s date, they talked about the schedule, the topics to be discussed and possible speakers. Representatives from governments and private sectors of Brazil and the Arab countries will be invited. ANBA will release the schedule when it’s completed.
In Cairo, the CEO of the Arab Chamber had a meeting with ambassadress Manal Mowafi, head of the division of Chambers of Commerce and the Private Sector of the Arab League, and with the director of the Department of Economic Relations of the Arab League, Tamer Zaidan. The topics discussed were the same.
Qatar
Before taking off to Beirut, Alaby took part on Sunday (12) in the last stage of a mission by the Brazilian government to five Arab countries in the Gulf to promote investments in Brazil.
In Doha, Qatar, the delegation headed by the secretary of Project Coordination of the Investment Partnership Program (PPI), Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, met with executives from the sovereign fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and from the Qatar Development Bank (QDB).
According to Alaby, the QIA’s representatives asked a lot of questions about airport concessions in Brazil and pre-salt oil exploration and production. In the last bidding rounds held by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), the state-owned Qatar Petroleum, in a consortium with Shell and Chinese company CNOOC, was awarded one of the blocks offered. Shell is the operator with a 55% share, while Qatar Petroleum has 25% and CNOOC holds 20%.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani