Promoting Sustainable Trade and Investment for a more Resilient Region

• The UfM Trade and Investment Forum 2022 is the Forum’s fourth edition in four successive years, attesting to the emphasis that the UfM places on trade facilitation and investment promotion as pre-requisites of economic development and integration in the region.
• The Forum comes at a time when economic, political and humanitarian global disruptions are posing serious challenges that call for an orchestrated regional response that is innovative, sustainable and inclusive.

Istanbul, 4 November 2022. Regional trade integration and investment promotion have always been priority areas of action for the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean and are at the heart of the new UfM Hub for Jobs, Trade and Investment (2022-2025), which represents the second phase of a fruitful partnership with the German Development Cooperation.

Within the framework of this partnership, the UfM Secretariat and the German Development Cooperation have co-organised the fourth edition of the UfM Trade and Investment Forum physically in Istanbul, Türkiye, on 4 November 2022 under the auspices of The Ministry of Trade of the Republic of Türkiye and in collaboration with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

This year’s edition brought together 150 participants comprising a broad spectrum of high-level speakers, partners and stakeholders from different sectors of the Euro-Mediterranean Region to discuss the current regional economic dynamics in a changing global context with a focus on three interrelated thematics, namely green transition, regional value chains and hedging against global disruptions.

In his Welcoming Remarks, UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel stressed that he UfM Secretariat prioritizes trade facilitation and investment promotion on its agenda in a region that still punches way below its weight in terms of trade integration and investment attractiveness.” During his keynote, H.E. Dr. Mehmet Muş, Minister of Trade of the Republic of Türkiye, called for strategies that would favor food and energy security, resilient value chains and sustainable agriculture.

For his part, H.E. Kamel Rezig, Minister of Trade and Export Promotion of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, called for closer trade collaboration and investment promotion in the region, as well as the need to create sustainable jobs. Speakers from several governments, reginal and international organizations, the Private Sector and Social Partners, as well as think-tanks, shared their insights and enriched the discussion throughout the Forum’s three panels.

In the sidelines of the Forum, UfM Secretary General Kamel held a meeting with the Algerian and the Turkish Ministers of Trade, during which he shared with them the efforts underway by the UfM Secretariat in different areas of priority that range from economic development and women empowerment to climate action and energy efficiency.

The key recommendations emanating from the UfM Trade and Investment Forum will feed into the preparation work for the coming UfM Ministerial on Trade, which will be hosted by the Kingdom of Spain during the last quarter of 2023.