|
Mercosur Member States will sign, during the Summit of South American-Arab Countries, an agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council, integrated by Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.
According to the Director of the Department of Trade Promotion of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, Mário Vilalva, the idea is to establish a free trade zone between the two blocs.
Vilalva said that Gulf countries have excellent financial reserves and traditionally invest on infrastructure, energy, and tourism.
Vilalva affirmed that the meeting will be important for people networking and future business establishment.
"We don't want a meeting solely to buy and sell, but to establish a network," he said.
According to him, Brazilian government wants to expand business with Arab governments.
Last year, commercial exchange between Brazil and Arab countries amounted to US$ 8.2 billion, 50% higher than in 2003. According to the director, the intention is to increase this value to US$ 15 billion in two years.
A preparatory meeting for the Summit happened this Sunday, May 8, with South American and Arab High Officials. The Ministry of Foreign Relations' Under Secretary General for Cooperation, Ruy Nogueira, said that one of the subjects presented was the Entrepreneurial Event, which begins today in Brasília, the Brazilian capital.
The event will be opened by the Minister of Development, Industry, and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan, who will emphasize the importance of trading, and present results of the December 2003 presidential mission to Syria, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Libya.
Furlan will also have bilateral meetings with Arab countries' Ministers of Commerce. A meeting with Furlan and the Minister of Economy and Trade of Syria, Amer Husni Lutfi, is already scheduled to discuss ways of increasing bilateral commercial exchange.
According to Nogueira, 29 of the 34 participating countries already confirmed they will have stands at the Convention Center, where the Entrepreneurial Event will happen.
"The idea is that during three days there will be information exchange and presentations aiming at creating a positive environment for business," he affirmed.
The Entrepreneurial Event will discuss issues such as how to make business between South America and Arab Countries, investment promotion, and how tourism can become an element for bringing nations together.
The director of the Department of Trade Promotion of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, Mário Vilalva, said that 1,050 entrepreneurs are expected to participate on the event, 250 of which, Arabs, and 300, South Americans.
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.