An increasing number of German companies explore Dubai's markets

This came in a meeting earlier today where the Director General received representatives from small and medium sized companies from Germany who are interested in establishing relations with their counterparts in Dubai. The fields represented by the delegation included fashion, engineering, consultancy, management and archeticture.

Mr. Al Mutaiwee affirmed that such initiatives will help boost relations between the two countries, "non-oil trade between Dubai and Germany reached $1.7 billion in 2002" he stated. He added that such efforts are being made on both sides to help achieve this goal, the best example being the Dubai-German Economic Forum the Chamber is organizing to be held in Munich next May.

The delegation was headed by Mr. Hans-Werner Czerwinski, the Managing Director of the Federal Association of small and Medium sized Enterprises in Hamburg, which is considered to be the biggest federal association in the whole of Europe, in terms of members. It has 120,000 companies from all over Europe, and includes some non-European countries such as China as mentioned by Mr. Czerwinski.

Mr. Al Mutaiwee briefed the delegates who are in Dubai for the first time on many logistics, laws and regulations of doing business in Dubai, clearing up many misconceptions some of them had. "It is important that we get the right message across to business communities all over Europe, as many people misjudge the UAE in general and Dubai in particular according to wrong information they have been given", Mr. Al Mutaiwee said.

Mr. Czerwinski expressed the interests of many German businessmen to attract UAE businessmen to large projects and investment opportunities in Germany. He mentioned a project underway in Hamburg to develop a business park over an area of 350 hectares, which is to be the largest business park in Europe. In addition, he suggested that the Dubai Chamber invites investors from Dubai to take part in this project, and for the DCCI to sign a cooperation agreement with the Federal Association.