Dubai Chamber Explores Swiss Synergies

by Lorys Charalambous, Tax-News.com, Cyprus

18 May 2010

Representatives from the Dubai business community and their Swiss counterparts have discussed investment opportunities and possible business synergies.

Members of Dubai Chamber’s business groups and councils were given an insight into Switzerland as an export destination and the opportunity to network with trade bodies and businessmen from Switzerland.

Director General of the DCCI, Buamim said: ”Switzerland shares with Dubai many similarities some of which include strategic location, sophisticated infrastructure, investment opportunities, technology know-how and a developed strong economy.”

Buamim pointed out that common areas of potential cooperation can be found in the exports and logistics, financial and healthcare sectors. He emphasized that Switzerland can be Dubai’s gateway to the European continent as Dubai is the gateway for Swiss exporters to reach the African, Asian and GCC markets.

“There are 169 Swiss ownership and partnership companies operating in Dubai as Switzerland ranked 5th on the list of Dubai’s trading partners in 2009. Dubai Chamber members' exports to Switzerland in the last year reached around AED833m. These numbers should push us to work more on enhancing our trading ties and one positive step in this direction could be opening a Swiss trade representative office in the Emirate which can play an instrumental role in consolidating the bilateral trade ties between the two sides,” Buamim added.

For his part, Consul General of Switzerland, Gerhard Bruegger said: ”Switzerland has globally the highest quality in infrastructure, two main cities ranked among the 3 best in quality of living, the best motivated workforce with the 2nd best productivity rate, high political stability, a leading banking services and tourism sector, an industry with mainly small- and medium-sized enterprises and products in all sectors of advanced technologies, world renowned universities, technical and R&D institutions and all this in the very heart of Europe. Plenty of good reasons for considering Switzerland for your business, travels and leisure.”

Buamim stressed that the Chamber is fully committed to providing all the necessary support to Swiss businessmen and helping them set up new direct businesses and joint ventures in Dubai.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (since merged into the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority) and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has been in existence since 2007. The MoU put in place arrangements facilitating the exchange of information and investigative cooperation between the DFSA and the Swiss banking regulator.

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