JEDDAH: Saudi Minister of Agriculture Fahad Abdulrahman Balghunaim will be joining the other GCC ministers who are set to meet on Nov. 22-24 in Abu Dhabi for a high-level ministerial conference to discuss the development of an integrated food policy for the region. The meeting will take place alongside SIAL Middle East, the regional version of the world's largest food exhibition. “The GCC's foodservice market is worth more than $31 billion. Last year, bilateral food trade between Saudi Arabia and UAE alone topped $267billion,” said Fadi Saad, director of SIAL Middle East at Turret Media. “As the region's biggest economy and largest individual food importer, Saudi Arabia has a huge influence in sustaining the GCC's foodservice market by supporting the consolidation of the food agenda to strengthen the region's food trade.” The Kingdom is currently GCC's largest food importer with spending of more than $17 billion. The food industry accounts for around 13 percent of total imports and represents the country's fourth largest import sector. The reasons behind the surge in domestic food demand include high population growth, steady rise in tourism, the suspension of local wheat production, and the need for more foreign workers to support a growing number of projects. The emergence of numerous food distribution channels, franchises, hypermarkets and restaurants that rely heavily on bulk imports and branding is also one of the most important factors behind the increase in demand for food supply. According to the quarterly bulletin of foreign trade, Saudi Arabia's share of Abu Dhabi's total re-exports was 13.2 percent. “The emirate witnessed a positive growth in re-exports to all GCC countries,” Saad said. The keynote session will bring together agriculture, finance, environment and trade ministers from UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Romania, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan to discuss the common GCC standards for food risk assessment and safety, nutrition, emergency response, and effective communication procedures for imminent risk.
