June 2, 2010. From June 3 to 4, 2010, Tunisia will host the Carthage forum on investment, a traditional international meeting held by the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA) in Gammarth (north of Tunisia).
Aiming at making better known the Tunisian production site among foreign business communities, the forum will focus on “Decisive factors of technological attractiveness of the Tunisian Site”.
The 12th edition of the forum, which will be attended by some 1000 participants from 23 countries, also endeavors to favor a better profile of what Tunisia can provide in terms of technology, know-how and available skills.
Mrs. Mongia Khemiri, FIPA General Manager, said that this theme is part of the 11th item of the 2009-2014 presidential program: “Towards an environment- friendly, energy saving and innovative economy with high technological content”.
One of the three panels scheduled will be devoted to present the role of human resources and enterprises in mastering technology.
In addition, the event will deal with the effort deployed by the Tunisian government “in education, research, training, ownership by the public and private economic agents of technology and improvement of its penetration into productive sectors”, as well as long-term development of 12 science parks nationwide.
In this regard, Tunisia aims at creating privileged areas or “poles excellence” to promote synergies between education, research and entrepreneurship and agglomeration effects that are highly attractive to foreign investment.
The second panel will examine the way Tunisia is perceived in international relations with respect to competitiveness, environment, human development, and assessment of Tunisian economy by the World Bank).
During the event, Mrs. Mongia Khemiri will also provide an analysis of the good scores achieved by Tunisia in some sub-headings such as governance and good management of public funds.
The third panel will cope with “off shoring, towards a more technological evolution”. The panelists will review the international relocation of services in Tunisia, especially ICTs (11 % of the country’s GDP) and services provided by computer engineering firms.
ICTs, which have contributed to the phenomenon of off shoring services, have allowed fixing strategies in Tunisia entirely dedicated to developing new activities: call centers, data entry, remote services, basic technical support, transaction processing, research and development, engineering.
Regarding new trends of the forum, Mrs. Mongia Khemiri stressed in the first trend that “the forum will not be only targeting investors who are highly desirous to invest in Tunisia, but will also identify partners for Tunisian enterprises”, adding that “this is for us, an important step towards internationalizing Tunisian firms”.
Insofar as the second trend is concerned, it will assure permanence of and even sustain the already established foreign direct investment (FDI) in Tunisia through the optimal support brought by the Tunisian authorities to companies that have already chosen Tunisia as a platform to develop their activities.
