Industry 4.0 and digital economy, Important Italian presence at Tunisia investment forum, November 21, 2017
TUNISIA – Nearly 100 Italian economic operators active in various sectors, including mechatronics, who participated in the Tunisia Investment Forum, the event organized last week by the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency and which is the main international meeting dedicated to investment in Tunisia.
To report it is the newsletter of Farnesina’s economic diplomacy, from which it is learned that around 1,200 operators from over 40 countries participated in the Forum.
This year’s event was devoted to the opportunities offered by the new Investment Act which came into force in April, following the international conference “Tunisia 2020” organized last year and the deepening of the themes of regional development, agriculture, industry 4.0 and digital economy.
The Forum was opened by Prime Minister Yussef al-Shahed, who assured the Tunisian government’s commitment to the completion of the reform process. In particular, Shahed stressed the priority given to entrepreneurship support through policies to facilitate access to credit for small and medium-sized enterprises, the financing of a strategic program to increase exports and increasing attention to the economic development of the most backward regions with investment in infrastructures for the realization of major projects. The public-private partnership will be used in particular for the sectors of the digital economy, renewable energies, port logistics and tourism. In order to boost the growth of foreign investment, the list of economic sectors still subject to authorization will be reviewed.
The Minister of Development, Investments and Cooperation, Zied Ladhari, confirmed the potential of Tunisia to become a regional hub for investors, especially thanks to the many operational and strategic benefits that it offers as the proximity to European and African markets. It is the intention of the government, concluded the minister, to continue the implementation of reforms aimed at creating a more open market for direct foreign investment.
The Tunisian-Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized a seminar dedicated to the topic of Industry 4.0, attended by the President of the Italian Automation and Mechatronics Association (Aidam), Michele Viscardi, and the Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the School Upper Sant’Anna of Pisa, Calogero Maria Oddo. The innovation capabilities of the Tunisian industry and the opportunities that mechatronics has introduced for Tunisia have been discussed. Aidam has proposed to promote industrial relations in the field of mechatronics through the establishment of an Italo-Tunisian collaboration platform with the aim of initiating an exchange between the private and academic world around automation and innovative value-added technologies added. [MV]
Sources Info Foreign Markets and InfoAfrica www.infoafrica.it
