BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.24
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Poland and Azerbaijan could analyse cooperation on third markets, Polish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Rafał Poborski told Trend.
“We always emphasize that agriculture and food processing could be these fields where our cooperation has potential to growth. Poland poses unique know-how in both fields and we are ready to consider best possible ways to share this experience with our Azerbaijani partners. Polish and Azerbaijani offer in agro-food dimension is complementary and while enhancing mutual trade we can also analyse cooperation on third markets,” said the envoy.
Poborski noted that Azerbaijan due to the unique geographical location could provide Polish exporters an access to the new markets.
“Poland could also play a role of Azerbaijani “window to EU market”. It should be even easier taking into account multimodal transport corridors that we established between our countries. One should not forget that to open for Azerbaijani products EU market they firstly must meet EU standards which specification is well known. Here we always underline that Poland is ready to offer Azerbaijan a technical support in order to prepare your companies to be more active on European market. We are already taking part with IT and LIT in a EU-AZ twinning program “Strengthening the capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture to improve effectiveness and efficiency of state support to agriculture” as well as proposed recently with IT another one to Food Safety Agency called “Strengthening Azerbaijan's food safety system (with a focus on the fruit &vegetable sector)”. In the second case other offer was chosen by our Azerbaijani partners but we are nevertheless open for cooperation in the field,” he added.
Poborski also pointed out mutually beneficial new prospective directions of cooperation.
“For example, it is a bit surprising that in Azerbaijan, a sea country with an interesting coastline, sailing is relatively poorly developed. Sailing can be understood here as a thriving and profitable tourism sector, as well as an educational segment for youth. There has been a real sailing boom in Poland in the last 20 years. On the one hand, several hundred sailing schools were established to train and give students sailing licenses to run yachts, and on the other, a significant & profitable tourism sector was established, attracting foreign tourists. Azerbaijan has a great potential to develop sailing and nautical tourism. Poland, having extensive experience in this field (a wide training, instructor, didactic base, etc.), as well as being a world leader in the production of boats and yachts, could become Azerbaijan's partner in developing this tourism sector. As a result, Azerbaijan could become a leader in sailing tourism and sports in the entire Caspian Sea basin,” said the ambassador.
He believes that another area with high potential for increasing cooperation is, for example, financing innovations.
“Poland with its current innovations &, startups support programs is now the best place for the young high-tech companies interested in developing their business and ideas in EU. Polish investors, venture capital and private equity funds are actively looking for attractive investment targets and innovative projects around the world. Azerbaijani startups and innovative entrepreneurs could take advantage of this offer and opportunities. As a result of such cooperation, new innovative technological solutions and products of Polish-Azerbaijani origin could appear on the European and world markets,” added Poborski.
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