AmCham Lebanon takes over as the New Chair of the MENA Council (July, 2009)

Members of the AmCham MENA Regional Council met in Amman on July 27 to celebrate the Council’s chairmanship transition from AmCham Jordan to AmCham Lebanon and to elect the Council’s Vice Chair. AmCham Lebanon’s President Mr. Salim Zeenni is now the Chairman of the MENA Council for the period of two years, and the President of AmCham Tunis Mr. Nazeh Ben Ammar was voted Vice Chair of the Council. The meeting was attended by Board members and Executives from AmCham Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunis.

During the meeting members discussed future plans of the Council, and agreed that the next MENA Council Annual meeting would be held in Beirut next November on the margins of a major ICT event that AmCham Lebanon will be organizing. The exact date is yet to be confirmed.

AmCham Egypt invited all other AmCham representatives to participate in the “The Egypt Business Summit on Climate Change” a major Conference organized by AmCham Egypt in conjunction with UNDP, on October 28, 2009, to assess the impact of global warming on the private sector and come up with recommendations on how to minimize the negative consequences of this phenomenon. AmCham Jordan and AmCham Lebanon expressed their strong interest in taking part in this event.

AmCham Lebanon also invited all member AmChams to take part in the upcoming ‘Made in America 2010’ exhibition which is scheduled to take place in April 2010, and proposed that each Amcham could lead a delegation to Beirut and possibly have its own country pavilion.

It was discussed that joint business missions focusing on specific sectors could be organized by the Council. AmCham Jordan is currently working on organizing two business missions to the U.S. that are scheduled to take place in the spring of 2010. Information related to each will be shared with other Council members to begin studying the benefits of organizing them as joint business missions with other council members.

Members also discussed ways to promote and further increase the number of shared benefits offered by each member AmCham to members of other AmChams. Valid benefits from Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunis are available on the MENA website www.amchammena.org

Members also discussed the possibility of involving committees of different sectors and having them work together to promote trade and investment between member countries and the U.S. which will have long term rewards for the different countries. It was agreed during the meeting that Committees will be formed on a regional level to work on issues related to specific sectors in the MENA region. The first committee to be formed will be the ‘Agro-Food Business Committee’, chaired by Mr. Arslan Sinno, Vice President for Membership, AmCham Lebanon. Other AmChams are yet to nominate their representatives who will serve on the Committee.

Several AmChams and business councils had expressed their interest in joining and integrating with the MENA Council. It was agreed that a new membership category would be created for Business Councils that are not an ‘AmCham’. These would be considered as ‘Affiliate Members’, and would have a different set of criteria for joining the Council.

Members also discussed ways of linking the membership of the different organizations and making them aware of the activities of the MENA Council. It was agreed that AmCham Egypt would handle the awareness campaign, and as the Council’s permanent secretariat would take the lead in promoting the council’s activities.