Cairo hosted the joint meeting of the Arab and Turkish Chambers. The meeting was chaired from the Arab side by Mr. Mohamed Abdo Saeed, the President of the UAC and Mr. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, the President of TOBB from the Turkish side. The meeting came at the invitation of Ahmed El-Wakil, the President of FEDCOC, and in the presence of representatives of the Arab and Turkish Chambers.
The President of the Union of Arab Chambers delivered a speech at the beginning of the meeting, in which he welcomed the attendance and stressed that "such meetings constitute an important factor in building strong relations between the Arab world and the Turkish Republic, especially as the Arab-Turkish relations are witnessing together with UAC and TOBB headed by Mr. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, has further opened up economic and trade cooperation between our Arab countries and the Turkish Republic. This cooperation has resulted the establishment of the Arab-Turkish Chamber, which has played a major role since its establishment in terms of raising the level of trade, economic and investment exchange, especially in light of the enormous material and human resources of the Arab countries and Turkey, which has managed to be among the most important economies not only at the regional level but also on the international one."
Mr. Abdo Saeed pointed out that "we as an Arab and Turkish private sector have an important and prominent role in raising the level of economic cooperation between our countries to a greater level, and on this basis, the strategic projects are the common denominator between the Arabs and the Turks because of the need of the two countries to operate the labor force mainly because the majority of the Arab countries need the human-capital-based investment, as is the case for Turkey, because it is well known that each year, these countries need to provide more than 10,000 new jobs per million people, not to mention the huge numbers of people who have been for years waiting in the job search queues."
He added “we are all aware of the great impact of development and economic integration on the progress, development and stability of our countries, which is a fundamental objective we have been working on for decades in the Union of Arab Chambers, in cooperation with the League of Arab States and the Arab Joint Action Organizations and through the Arab-Foreign Chambers Joint. We share our trade partners, primarily Turkey, with the responsibilities of developing and strengthening the trade and we are also looking forward to increase the Turkish direct investment in the Arab development projects, and I believe that this kind of relations is the natural path to the consolidation of the Arab-Turkish economic relations, especially that we need to conduct more joint efforts to encourage joint projects and expand the investment in the industrial and food sectors. We should enlarge the cooperation in the services, technology and scientific research sectors, in conjunction with the facilitation of mutual product access and the reduction of non-tariff restrictions."
