Italian exports to the Arab Emirates continue to grow and Dubai is becoming an increasingly important showcase, also for logistics companies looking to tap into the trade between the two countries. Five major logistics operators will be taking part in the grouping organised by the Italian Trade Commission at the “Sitl Dubai 2009” show being held in the International Exhibition and Convention Center from 3 to 5 November. Two strategically important port authorities for the Mediterranean, those of Taranto and Naples, are going to be there. Joining them will also be Inlog spa, Logica scar of Naples and Brescia’s “Gabriele d’Annunzio” Airport. The group will make use of an area of about one hundred square metres inside the World Trade Center, offering solutions to the needs of the goods transportation sector in the huge Dubai Hub. The Italian Trade Commission, which has been handling logistics since 2002, believes firmly in the importance of promotion abroad not only as a country exporting single products, but also as a countrywide system that can guarantee ease of movement and distribution of products. In fact, international competition today is no longer among individual companies, but between systems of companies and economic areas, through the efficient use of logistic systems in provisioning and distributing in the globalised market. ICE has begun to promote logistics precisely from this point of view, understanding logistics to be a range of services and techniques that can improve business competitiveness on foreign markets and increase efficiency in the provisioning and distribution of products.

In 2008 the United Arab Emirates came sixteenth (above Japan) in the list of importers of Italian goods and services, with a growth of 18.2% over the previous year. This was the biggest increase among the first 20 importers of Italian goods and services. Italian exports to Dubai and the Arab Emirates in 2008 were 5.2 billion euro, representing 1.4% of total Italian exports, and the Emirates confirmed its place as the top Italian export outlet in the Middle East and North Africa.

Thanks to its strategic geographical position, Italy is positioned as the natural platform for exchange in the Mediterranean. It is crossed by three major lines of global communication, two of them running from east to west (one from the Balkans to Eastern Europe toward Western Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, and the other from the Far East to Western Europe via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean), and one from north to south (from North Africa and Near and Middle-Eastern countries toward Southern and Central Europe). Thanks to its strategic position, Italy, like Dubai, is at the centre of this growing development of goods traffic flows, gravitating around the Mediterranean basin, that involve one fifth of the world’s maritime traffic. It can offer logistic and transportation services to this sector of activity for the crossing, offering itself as the ideal partner for the great Hub of the Arab Emirates, a fixed point of transit for goods and products between East and West .