The Australia Arab Chamber of Commerce & Industry (AACCI) is the big body of foreign investment and trade between Australia and the Arab region. They are a member of the Union of Arab Chambers and is the longest-serving Australian Arab Chamber of Commerce, operating nationally for 50 years now. They serve 21 Arab countries across the main region, from Morocco all the way through Iraq. As a very established chamber, they play a valued critical role for the export of Australian goods and services into the region. They provide certain services like marketing and virtually empower the trading investment between Australia and the Arab region.

Mohamed Hage is one of the directors of AACCI, where he also serves as the national vice-chair and treasurer. Like his fellow directors, his role is to support the membership to empower trade and investment, networking, and business to business matching. Predominantly, their main focus is to ensure that their members get the most that they can in facilitating trade investment between the region. He says that the good thing about the Australian Chamber of Commerce is that they have a diverse set of skills that complement each other as they come from a diverse set of sectors. He cites as an example their national chairman who is in mining, as well as others who come from banking and finance, defense, and education. He says this is important as this provides diversity for the Chamber. 

Since the chamber operates nationally and their leadership team come from a variety of sectors, they are able to complement and support the trading investment between Australia and the Arab region on a national basis as they have offices in five cities across Australia. Moreover he cites that the team has a very deep understanding of the region, both from a cultural and business perspective. They have several directors who are honorary consuls of countries from the Arab region and this brings in-depth experience to support their members. 

Mohamed classifies their members into two primary categories: physical exporting members and those who come from a variety of sectors. The physical exporters are the ones who provide a range of products and services in the food and beverage industry and they mainly utilise the AACCI’s stamping services. The other group come from a variety of sectors like education, health, and services. Their members range from large corporate, Australian publicly listed companies, as well as companies that are listed in the stock exchanges in the Arab region, all the way down to simple small businesses and startups. 

To know more about the AACCI, visit their website at www.austarab.com.au.