RIYADH, 10 February — Tunisia has proposed to the Kingdom the setting up of a free trade zone to facilitate duty-free access for their products on both sides.
Disclosing this at a meeting of the Tunisian trade delegation at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry today, Ambassador Izeddine Al-Gargarny said his country has concluded similar agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Libya for boosting trade and investment with those countries.
The meeting was attended on the Saudi side by Hussein Al-Athel, secretary-general of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Fahad Al-Obeikan, member of the board of directors of RCCI, besides prominent Saudi businessmen. Abdulsalam Mansour, general manager, Tunisian Agency for Foreign Investment, led the Tunisian delegation which included representatives from the banking, tourism and investment sectors.
Referring to the FTZ proposal, the ambassador said it will figure on the agenda of the Saudi-Tunisian Joint Economic Commission meeting to be held sometime this year. Among other things, it will also include a proposal for setting up a Saudi-Tunisian Business Council to promote trade and investment.
The ambassador said Saudi-Tunisian trade stood at SR242 million in 2000, with Saudi exports accounting for SR164 million and that from Tunisia SR78 million. There were five joint ventures, three of them industrial with a cumulative value of SR221 million. Tunisian share in these ventures was just one percent. The remaining two non-industrial ventures, valued at SR144.6 million, had five percent Tunisian share.
Speaking on behalf of the Riyadh chamber, Al-Athel said Saudis top the list of Arab investors in Tunisia, notably in the travel and tourism sectors. He said the Tunisian delegation had put forward various suggestions for diversifying investment in that country. One of the proposals calls for the manufacture of products using Saudi raw materials, with 40 percent value added from the Tunisian side. "It will then qualify for the status of a Tunisian product and be eligible for all the concessions in the EU market."
Abdulsalam Mansour said Arab investment constituted no more than seven percent of the total overseas investment in his country.
The EU countries together contributed 80 percent of the foreign investment. He called for higher investment in new areas that were opening up in the wake of the government’s privatization program.
These included projects for the manufacture of mobile phone, construction of an airport with a capacity to serve five million passengers, an oil refinery and a seaport in Sousse. All these projects, to be set up in different parts of Tunisia, would involve private-sector participation.
