Tunisian Ambassador to the UAE visits DCCI

Along with Mr. Abdul Raouf bin Salem, Director of the Gulf Region at the Tourism Office of the Tunisian Embassy in the UAE, and Mr. Mohammed Ali Al Hasni, Director of the Trade Office at the Tunisian Embassy. Mr. Tariq Hilal Lootah, Director of Trade and Industrial Development Department in DCCI, has also attended the meeting.

Al Mutaiwee welcomed the Tunisian Ambassador and stressed the strong relations between the UAE and Tunisia and the importance of Tunisia's commercial representation in Dubai due to its role in promoting quality Tunisian products in the UAE, in addition to organizing and participating in several trade exhibitions and economic conferences and seminars which help introduce the business communities in Dubai and Tunisia to the aspects and requirements of markets in both countries, and opening new channels to support the mutual trade investments.

"The DCCI welcomes all diplomatic missions and other official trade delegations which visit Dubai to be introduced to the emirate's latest economic development projects, and to the pioneering experience of the DCCI in supporting the activities of the local business community through providing the best value added services and other facilities that help create an appropriate environment to develop their businesses," said Al Mutaiwee.

The DCCI's director general underlined the importance of the visit of the Tunisian First Minister to the UAE, and to the DCCI in particular, on a top of an official delegation that would include top economic figures, investors and businessmen where they will hold meetings with the DCCI's chairman and members to discuss various issues related to exchanging expertise and consultancy to help improve trade in Tunisia and open wider scopes to attract Arabic investments.

"The DCCI will be trying to invite its top members and businessmen to meet the Tunisian First Minister and his accompanied delegate. We are also ready to receive another commercial delegation from Tunisia to help introduce the local business community in Dubai to the investment opportunities in Tunisia and the facilities which the Tunisian government provides to investors, benefiting from Tunisia's remarkable relations with the European Union (EU) due to its role in opening new European markets before the businessmen in Dubai," Al Mutaiwee added.

He pointed out that such visits and presentations which could be conducted at the DCCI on investment opportunities in Tunisia would help strengthen fruitful cooperation between the businessmen and investors in Dubai and their counterparts in Tunisia.

"We would like to re-stress the importance of setting up a permanent trade center in Dubai to promote the high quality Tunisian products due to its role in supporting the trade exchange between both countries, in addition to its role in encouraging investment and enhancing trade in general in Dubai and Tunisia," said Al Mutaiwee.

His Excellency Ahmed bin Mustafa, the Tunisian Ambassador to the UAE, highlighted the importance of the visit of the Tunisian First Minister to Dubai which is a strong boost to the relations between the UAE and Tunisia on all fronts. He said that the visit would be significant due to the meetings which the First Minister would be holding in Abu Dhabi and Dubai which would also help strengthening the current cooperation between the two countries.

"The visit of the Tunisian delegation to Dubai is quite important due to the remarkable economic achievements which Dubai has gained. We are very keen to work on exchanging expertise with Dubai, mainly because Tunisia's basic interest now is to attract the Arabic investments and to benefit from coping with the giant economic projects in Dubai," said the Tunisian Ambassador.

The Tunisian Ambassador re-invited the DCCI to attend the conference of the world IT summit due to be held in Tunisia on November 16 - 18 and which is expected to be attended by more than 17,000 people of businessmen, economic experts, bankers and investors in different fields of business.

"We highly admire Dubai's remarkable economic experience in Jebel Ali area from which we aspire to benefit in attracting giant investments from different countries of the world, in addition to the unique management of the Jebel Ali Free Zone," said the Ambassador.

He noted that there are more than 10 companies working in Jebel Ali Free Zone. He also showed interest in getting more information about the major economic projects and trade corporations working in Dubai to help support their business community.

Dubai's total foreign non-oil trade in 2003 surged to AED 77.7 million (US Dollar 21.1 million), compared to AED 61.1 million in 2002 (US Dollar 16.6 million).

Dubai's total imports from Tunisian in 2003 reached AED 17.8 million (US Dollar 4.8 million), whereas Dubai's total exports to Tunisia in the same year hit AED 14.1 million (US Dollar 3.8 million), while Dubai's total re-exports to Tunisia in 2003 reached AED 45.8 million (US Dollar 12.4 million).