Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem: Growing regional trade in many areas offsets global trade slowdown

Sultan bin Sulayem, DP World Group Chairman & CEO and Chairman of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation, said: “Many regions around the world are witnessing growth in inter-country trade values, which partially offsets the slowdown in global trade. The growth of inter-regional trade in South America and Africa reflected positively on DP World’s business performance with a year-on-year container volume growth of 3.2% in 2016, that went beyond analysts’ expectations. We also expect India and Africa to continue to enhance the growth of our operations over the next years.”

He said that “there are more than 220 million consumers in mainland areas across Africa, which creates opportunities for us to develop infrastructure especially railways and inland terminals to move goods from ports into these areas. This is exactly what we work on in DP World through collaboration with governments of Senegal and other African nations. Investment in infrastructure development requires public-private partnerships. Our participation at World Government Summit is intended to emphasize the importance of government to business synergies.”             

In interviews with several TV channels on the sideline of WGS 2017, Sultan bin Sulayem reaffirmed that the most important thing to focus on in building global port operation partnerships is to keep pace with the world’s technology advancement by making use of cutting-edge automation facilities to enhance operational efficiency. “This is what we do in DP World as we invest in technology to transform our services into fully automated operations, while also empowering our human resources to enable them bring new ideas and innovations to the table. Minds and ideas are an important asset for us at DP World.”    

DP World Group chairman & CEO also emphasized that the ongoing talk about trade protectionism and economic globalization pushback does not eliminate the need for all world countries to support growth in global trade by opening up markets. He believes that at the end of the day nations will still abide by the GATT and WTO regulations.

Commenting on U.S. President Trump’s recent trade policies, Bin Sulayem said that these policies are not against free trade but focus more on fair trade by making sure that all countries implement the same unified standards in opening up markets and respect international regulations that ensure fair competition.