JULY-AUGUST 2018 | ASIA ONE | 23and historical monuments, museums,
colonial buildings; but mostly a unique,
rich, friendly and hospitable culture.
It has a good services and a strong
hospitality infrastructure (more than
750 thousand hotel rooms), airports
(actually, a new airport in Mexico
City is under construction to handle
a capacity of 120 million passengers
(when fully operational) with an
investment of 13 billion dollars), ports
and highways connecting every corner
of our country. During the past years
the private and public sectors have
combined, coordinated and joined
efforts to work on different tasks
from hosting world events, festivals,
international congresses and expos,
to sports and include more SMEs
qualified to generate better services
and jobs, as well as the development of
products such as medical, cultural and
business tourism.
In 2017, Mexico reached record
highs with more than 39 million visitors
from around the world, being one of
the most visited countries (6th most
visited nation according to the United
Nations Tourism Organization).
The tourism industry in Mexico is
a significant contributor of income to
our economy; just last year in 2017,
Mexico received more than 21 billion
dollars from international tourists.MY EFFORTS TOWARDS CORDIAL
RELATIONS
On trade and business, together
with our commercial and investment
promotion office of ProMexico in
Dubai, we have been working on the
attraction of foreign direct investment
into our country through visiting
specific companies, sovereign fundsand participating in seminars, expos
and congresses all over the United
Arab Emirates, with the support of
governmental institutions such as the
Ministry of Economy, Dubai FDI and
of course the Chambers of Commerce
and Industry among other relevant
actors. Likewise, we have achieved the
execution of important agreements
between both nations to protect and
promote investments such as the APRI
(Agreement for the Protection and
Promotion of Reciprocal Investments,
which just entered into force this year)
and the Agreement to avoid Double
Taxation. The promotion of reciprocal
business missions and opportunities on
a daily basis is our goal; likewise, it has
been an important challenge since there
is a lack of knowledge and awareness
of the potential opportunities for the
private sector on both sides of the
equation. The United Arab Emirates
is a new market for Mexico, our
commercial office just opened less
than three years ago; however, there
have been significant advances in the
participation in trade exhibitions such
as Gulfood, Yummex, Arabian Travel
Market, or ADIPEC which have
brought important delegations from
Mexico achieving satisfactory results
in this regard. Likewise, Mexico has
received trade missions from the UAE
on a yearly basis since then, being
single companies or delegations as
the one headed by the Minister of
Economy of the United Arab Emirates
back in November 2016.
On the connectivity, we have been
working with the local airlines such as
Emirates in achieving soon passengers’
flights to Mexico; today we only have
cargo flights from Emirates, since
we believe connectivity is a key to
facilitate approaching and linking
businesspersons and companies of
both nations easily.
Each day, more and more companies
and individuals are becoming aware of
the business opportunities that each
nation offers to each other and that
there is a lot of room to grow, but it
is a process and takes time; that is
the reason that in each official visit or
each event that we, as representative
of Mexico, have tried to include the
business and economic topics on top
of the agenda.