This time, Annual Investment Meeting (AIM 2023) was held in the convention center of ADNEC in Abu Dhabi. It was full of exciting agenda and opportunities the UAE is offering by attracting FDIs and investments into the region across business sectors such as energy, hospitality, infrastructure, telecommunication and certainly startups.
More than 20,000 participants and 500 exhibitors were engaged during the 3-day AIM Congress. During the event, participants had the chance to (1) witness strategic partnerships being inked between countries. (2) business networking was attended by participants from over 175 countries and (3) most importantly, people were learning about future investments and trends in the local and global markets through diversified speaking panels that took place in different conference rooms.
I was delighted to take part in one of the conferences where I was part of the speaker panel during day #2 of AIM Congress 2023 session titled: Panel 5 – Access to Markets: Unlocking Growth in Logistics SMEs & Diversifying Supply Chain. Mr. Ayman Al Awadhi – Managing Director (The Corporate Group)
During the session, which was moderated by Sara Elgazzar, discussed internal factors (example: lack of talents and information barriers) and external factors (example: international standards and trade procedures) impacting SMEs and entrepreneurs and creating challenges for their growth and some solutions as tools to be adopted to overcome these hurdles.
Each speaker from a diversified background (entrepreneur running his own business, market research and intelligence expert, government representative in charge of FDI promotion) gave his/her input on the subject and added value to the esteemed audience who attended the session enthusiastically with panelists.
I was given an opportunity to provide a closer thought and I indicated that today entrepreneurs and business owners have to apply one single practice to tackle these challenges arising from internal and external factors. Through corporate governance practice, you could achieve transparency for outsiders to invest in your entity by accessing capital markets, for your entity to go global and be able to transact across the world, to provide a business that adopts succession planning that can last for generations and lastly to withstand against a growing number of uncertainty in volatile market we are living today with recent experience we just came out of it (the COVID-19 pandemic).
I would like to send my sincere gratitude to Emirati Entrepreneurs Association (EEA) who provided me with an opportunity to present my experience and expertise on such topic and, proud of being a contributing member of the association.
Written By: Mr. Ayman Al Awadhi – Managing Director (The Corporate Group)
