Maktoum bin Mohammed inaugurates GBF Latin America 2022 in Dubai

Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, on Wednesday inaugurated the Global Business Forum Latin America (GBF LATAM) 2022, held on the sidelines of Expo 2020 Dubai.

Organised by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Expo 2020 Dubai, the fourth edition of the forum explores new avenues of economic cooperation between the UAE, Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Maktoum bin Mohammed attended a special panel session titled “Lessons in Diversification and Partnership”, which featured Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana; Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade; Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of Dubai Chambers; and Hamad Buamim, President and CEO of Dubai Chambers, also attended the session.

Dr Ali spoke about the various synergies that existed between his country and the UAE, which he says offer huge potential for cooperation.

“The UAE and Guyana have a lot in common when you look at where the UAE started from, the size of the population, what drove growth and development, notably oil exploration and revenues. But what the UAE has really taught us is how to utilise those revenues to diversify the economy, ensure the quality of the system, improve government services, and build state-of-the-art infrastructure – and that is what we want to achieve in Guyana. We want to use the resources we will get from our oil resources to build an economy that is resilient and well-diversified,” he said.

“We are working with the UAE on several areas, the first of which is infrastructure development. Meanwhile, from a governance perspective, we are collaborating towards efficiency in government systems and technology transfer. Having a small population that is driven by technological advancement, efficiency, transparency, and accountability is key. We are creating an investment agreement to make it easy for investors in the UAE to invest in Guyana. We want to have government-to-government, but also people-to-people collaboration,” he added.

Al Zeyoudi highlighted the importance of the LATAM region for Dubai and the UAE.

“The UAE is looking to diversify its investments globally and, for us, Latin America is a very important region – we are talking about more than 400 million people. Looking at what has been achieved over the last five years in Latin America, the UAE has dominated most investments from the GCC into the region. At the same time, our trade volume now sits at $9 billion, which shows there is huge potential for trade,” the minister said.

“Latin America is a global source of food products, the continent is going to be one of the solutions to the global food security disturbances, which we saw during the pandemic and we are now seeing once again. Going into the region, we want to encourage the private sector; we cannot go and expand the relationship without the private sector. We want to ensure the investment protection agreements are there and to highlight the opportunities to investors,” Al Zeyoudi added.

Al Ghurair said that Dubai holds the key to unlocking Latin America’s economic potential, as one of the world’s fastest-growing city economies that can offer valuable expertise in key sectors such as logistics, infrastructure, retail, tourism and finance.

“The 27 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region offer a wealth of untapped potential as the Pacific Alliance, regional economic integration and reforms and Covid-led digital acceleration create new growth prospects,” he added.

Other key topics and issues under discussion over the next two days at GBF LATAM 2022 are how stakeholders from both regions can capitalise on the opportunities emerging across the LATAM economy, which according to the latest IMF, grew by six per cent in real terms in 2021 and is expected to grow by 4.3 percent between 2021 and 2025. — Wam