DAMMAM, 5 February 2007 — Last week, the president of the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EPCCI) Abdulrahman Rashed Al-Rashed was pleased to meet Niedersachsen’s minister of economy, labor and transportation Walter Hirche and his delegation at the Carlton Al-Moaibed Hotel. This was the first time a trade mission from the German State of Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony has traveled to the Eastern Province and the group received an enthusiastic welcome.
In his opening remarks on the occasion, Al-Rashed mentioned that one company in this German trade mission had received 35 offers of interest. Al-Rashed also stated that Germany has now displaced Japan as the Kingdom’s second largest trading partner.
“Despite the increase in business and trade, the investment of Saudi Arabia in Germany is far higher than the investment of Germany in Saudi Arabia,” said the EPCCI president. “We would like to see an increase in direct investment from German companies as well as a increase in the transfer of technology and skills.”
In reply to Al-Rashed’s comments, Hirche advised that members of the trade mission were all hoping to find representatives and partners in the Kingdom.
“These are not the big shots of Germany,” Hirche said. “These companies are small and medium-sized enterprises and in many, family owners are still responsible for the business. They are looking ahead in their business plans not just one year, but a generation.”
After the formalities concluded and the one-to-one business meeting began, Omar Hamza, assistant delegate of German Industry & Commerce for Legal Affairs, AHK German Saudi Arabia Liaison Office for Economic Affairs — the facilitators of the mission, stated that he was quite surprised to learn that Germany is now Saudi Arabia’s second largest trading partner.
“This is of course according to the latest statistics for 2006 and those numbers haven’t been officially published, but this is excellent news,” he asserted.
Last week’s trade mission was made up of 26 German companies who have been on a tour of the GCC. Hamza said that there had been particular interest from Saudi firms in those German companies on the mission that were specialists in engineering consulting, healthcare, machinery and power generation.
“German products have a good name here in Saudi Arabia,” Hamza observed. “This is because the quality of German products is first rate. German products aren’t well represented in consumer goods, but in the Saudi industrial sector, German products are the first choice especially in heavy machinery, water and healthcare. Security is another area that is expanding because we don’t have the same export restrictions on our security products as the Americans do. In February, a German trade delegation that has a large number of security companies among its delegates is coming to Riyadh and Dammam.
It should be noted that several women were among the delegates on the Niedersachsen Trade Mission. Hamza explained that including women as a part of the delegation was straight forward, especially due to the presence of the Minister.
“We do brief all the delegates before they come to the Kingdom and we meet the businesswomen at the airport and provide them with abayas,” Hamza said. “We do our best to respect the traditions of the Kingdom to ensure the success of the mission.”
Female executives were also among the representatives of the Saudi companies who came to meet the Germans. With all the negative press published recently in Europe about how difficult personal interaction is with veiled women, this was an opportunity to see such meetings first hand. Bernard Storm, president of August Storm GmbH & Co. was one businessman who had a meeting with two fully veiled Saudi women. Arab News asked him to describe his encounter.
“It was strange at first,” said Storm. “In our briefing before coming to Saudi Arabia, we are instructed not to make eye contact with Saudi women and not to touch them for any reason, even to shake hands. So I was nervous at first. It is unusual for me not to see facial expressions when speaking with someone in person. But I want to tell you that they really impressed me. The ladies speak excellent English so communicating with them is easy and they are well informed about power generation. In fact, they know far more than I do about the technical details of our products.”
The bottom line, could he do business with them?
“Yes, definitely,” replied Storm. “They are very modern in regards to business. I will communicate with them next week by e-mail.”
What about the Saudi businesswomen? Would August Storm be a company they would want to do business with in the future? Amani Mushara and Aziza Al-Zuraiqi, executive assistants for Global Suhaimi Company were quite pleased with several of the meetings they’d had with German companies and they explained that it would depend on the upcoming negotiations how matters would proceed. Mushara and Al-Zuraiqi were quite comfortable in the sessions with the German business representatives and it made no difference to them whether the delegates were men or women. All that mattered was that the delegates could provide the best information about the products and services their companies were offering.
“Global Suhaimi has an immediate requirement for power generators and is also looking into setting up a new business line with power generation equipment at its heart. Today we had exploratory meetings with the German companies and we found them very cooperative,” said Mushara. “This was an excellent opportunity for all of us and I would encourage more companies abroad to take an interest in doing business here in Saudi Arabia.”