Irish mission exploring trade potentials

Jan O’Sullivan, who heads the five-day Enterprise Ireland trade mission currently visiting Saudi Arabia and Qatar, added that the Middle East as a whole is a priority market.
“It fits in with Irish ambitions and the focus of Irish companies,” she said.
Accompanying the minister and her team are representatives of 45 Irish companies. The mission forms part of Enterprise Ireland’s intensive program of overseas events designed to help Irish companies secure an increased share in fast-growing export markets.
She added that the trade mission was about building on the success Irish companies already enjoyed in the Kingdom, to assist more companies to explore and capitalize on specific identified opportunities in the Gulf and to showcase Irish companies’ world-class capabilities.
O’Sullivan, on her first visit to the Kingdom since her appointment as trade minister last March, described the mission as one comprising highly specialized companies that drew on Ireland’s rich seam of high-tech, service companies, education and facility and project management skills.
“There are real potentials for partnerships between Irish and Saudi businesses,” she said.
Referring to the rapid infrastructure development under way in the Kingdom, O’Sullivan said: “For example, since our building boom has finished, we have spare capacity and we have a lot of people who have skills to offer.”
Areas of particular expertise, other than physical construction, include project design planning and management and bringing innovative thinking to practical problems that face the complex problems of building and running hospitals or data centers.
Already these qualities have begun to manifest themselves in Jeddah with Irish involvement in the landmark “intelligent” building on King Road in the city, famous for its ever-changing LED display that covers the entire façade.
The building is so environmentally efficient, it actually generates carbon credits. Energy saving is a feature in the Kingdom’s development plans that quote one estimate as predicting that unless the Kingdom substantially reduces its demand by 2020 by as much as half, the country’s energy production will be used in cooling systems.
Other major areas of current Irish activity in Jeddah’s business scene include hospitals in the city and with a major food processing company.
John MacNamara, Enterprise Ireland’s regional director for southern Europe, Middle East and Africa who is accompanying the minister, said it was important to niche-market Ireland’s particular skills and agreed that the service, planning and educational sector that served Saudi Arabia’s developing knowledge-based economy were particular areas of growth.
He commented that in the next few years Saudi Arabia would be producing from its education system around half a million graduates looking for good jobs — perhaps in the pharmaceutical and health industries.
“We had experience of that in the 1980s and feel that we can bring it here.”
He felt the demographic situation of Saudi Arabia now was similar to the one of Ireland in the 1980s. “We feel we can bring the results of that here,” he said.
The companies on the Saudi Arabia and Qatar mission are drawn from a range of sectors including telecoms and software, financial services, education, engineering and construction, health care and aviation.
The current visit continues the steady pattern of regular contacts between Saudi Arabia and Ireland that has been established through regular biyearly visits of trade missions and business groups.
Trade between the two nations, O’Sullivan noted, was not all one way. Bilateral trade passed 500 million euros (SR2.6 billion) with trade in services accounting for a further 260 million euros (SR 1.3 billion). This, said O’Sullivan, formed a positive basis for the 20 percent per annum increase in trade that she anticipated.
Ireland is recovering from the world downturn in trade and its economy is on the up. The Central Statistics Office said gross domestic product in the three months to June was 1.6 percent higher than in the first quarter and 2.3 percent higher than in the same period last year.
The country has much to offer besides its solid reputation in construction and planning. It is the largest exporter of infant milk formula in the world, the fifth largest exporter of beef and the seventh largest exporter of pharmaceuticals.
Fifteen of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world are based in Ireland drawing on the high quality output from the country’s education system. Other major products are medical equipment and computer software.
Ireland is currently home to half of the world’s leading financial services companies and a total of 1.7 trillion euros (SR2.3 trillion) in funds continue to be managed in Ireland. In addition, half of the world’s aircraft on lease are actually managed from Ireland.
Currently there are over 1,500 Saudi students in Ireland attending colleges of higher education. O’Sullivan hoped that this number would increase and return skills to the Kingdom as well as laying strong cross-cultural ties.