Foreword

www.arabhellenicchamber.gr Harris Geronikolas

President

Rashad Mabger

Secretary General

A Hopeful Farewell to the Pandemic!

Dear Reader,

We are happy to have started this year on a good note with the first online event ‘’Member to Member Networking” - an initiative held on 10 February 2021 that aimed at gathering our member companies in one platform so as to keep our channels of communications open for exchange of ideas, views and feedbacks.

Our second event, unique in its nature, the “Saudi - Greek e-Business Gathering”, took place on 3 March 2021 and brought together the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the largest middle eastern economy and a member of G20, with Greece and its businessmen. The significance of this event stems from the fact that both sides, Greek and Saudi, showed a vivid interest in active interaction and direct business meetings through the platform. The participation in this event was quite impressive.

In continuation with our policy of inclusion and widening participation strategy, we organized on 7 April 2021, the third virtual business event ‘’Greece-North Africa e-Business Gathering’’, with the participation of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. It is worth mentioning that some of these countries were hosted at such large-scale events of our Chamber for the first time. We were truly pleased by the level of speeches and deliberations, the interaction between speakers and the audience, as well as the direct online B2B meetings between participating businessmen.

Keeping our program on track, our fourth online event “Greece – GCC Countries e-Business Gathering’’ is coming at a favourable time of local and regional development, along with keen interest of Greece and Gulf Cooperation Council to further explore ways and means of enhancing their trade balance and the mutual flow of investments. There is no better time than now to get going and take practical steps to elevate these relations to a higher ground. In many ways, the two sides have enjoyed a long history of multifaceted engagements that go back millennia when the ancient Greeks often wrote about the affairs of Arabia and their fascination with it. Similarly, the Arabs, expressed equal admiration for Greek philosophy and science. This special relationship has endured over time and we firmly believe that it will continue flourishing, especially as far as the political and economic development is concerned.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a heavy financial toll on companies, institutions, businesses and our Chamber, as well. We are hopeful that our tireless efforts to be innovative with ideas for our events in order to generate income for day to day running of our organization, will be rewarded and, with the support of our loyal member companies, we will come out of this crisis strong enough to continue our business development journey, for which we will always be indebted and grateful to them.