MEDEF Businessmen to Visit Algeria Amid Turkish Fierce Competition
A delegation of businessmen from the “MEDEF”, the largest gathering of employers and patrons in France, will arrive in Algiers to meet with Algerian businessmen from different organisations and hold a business council between businessmen of the two countries.
The program of the two-day visit includes a working breakfast with the Algerian Confederation of Employers Citizens headed by Sami Akli, another evening meeting with the Algerian-French Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a working dinner with the Syndicate of the National Council for Economic Renewal headed by Kamal Moula, and will meet several ministers in the government next Tuesday.
According to Echorouk sources, the meetings are expected to be held at El Aurassi Hotel to discuss partnership opportunities between Algeria and France for the next stage, which has gone through many bumps and problems in recent months reflecting the reality of political tension between the two parties.
Relations have returned to witness a kind of warmth during the past days, following the election of the French President Emmanuel Macron for a second term, as talks leaked from both sides about the opening of a new page between the two parties, which is at the heart of the upcoming meeting Sunday in the Algerian capital, which will release a road paper to determine the parameters of the meeting, the terms of the partnership during the next stage, and studying the file of the high-level committee between the two countries, which has been stuck since the beginning of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic.
Today, the Algerian market gives golden opportunities to invest in front of foreign dealers, on the eve of discussing a new law that grants several tax privileges and facilities in the deadlines, easing burdens and confronting bureaucracy by responding to the investor’s file within a maximum period of one month and depositing documents at once at the single office, without running between departments and bodies in search of Licenses and permits, which were one of the reasons for driving foreign dealers out of the Algerian market in the past.
This also comes in an international context characterized by Algeria’s acquisition of important papers to pressure its negotiations with foreign investors, the most important of which is gas, in light of the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the high prices of this energy resource. Today, Algeria will be able to return strongly to imposing the logic of interest and pragmatism in its relations with its economic partners by forcing them to invest seriously, transfer experience and technology, create job opportunities and attract capital.
The visit of businessmen from the French “MEDEF” organization to Algeria is scheduled after an Algerian-Turkish business council in Istanbul, headed by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, last week on a state visit that led him to Turkey at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which lasted for 3 days and resulted in the signing of 15 agreements and memoranda of understanding between the two countries. The two parties suggest paving the way for concluding future strategic partnerships and strengthening Algerian-Turkish economic relations.
A delegation of Turkish businessmen is also preparing to visit Algeria soon to implement the content of these memoranda, while President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is preparing to visit Rome at the end of the month, with preparations for holding an Algerian-Italian business council next July in Algiers.
In the file of the future economic agreements, Algeria focuses on diversifying friends and partners based on the interest and what serves the national economy, away from the contracts that were satisfied with transforming the Algerian market into a mere space for the disposal of the surplus of European goods without any added value to the country, as the future partnership depends on the principle of equality and winner-winner negotiations, without granting exclusivity to any partner.
