The State of Israel aims to jumpstart strong trade relations with the Philippines seeing an opportunity to increase trade exchanges by capitalizing on each country’s expertise.
Israel Ambassador to the Philippines Zvi Aviner Vapni said Cebu could maximize trade opportunities in Israel as it also has a huge potential in attracting Information Technology (IT) related investments.
Cebu could also tap the growing 7.28 million population in Israel as market for Cebu-made products like furniture, wood raw material, processed food (fruits and seafood), among others, Vapni said.
Vapni was in Cebu early this week to meet officials and members of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) and offered to start a strong trade relation with the business community in Cebu.
“Unfortunately we don’t have strong trade relations with the Philippines, mainly because we are not aware of each other. Filipinos when they think about Israel they don’t connect it with business, and vice-versa,” Vapni said.
Currently, trade between the Philippines and Israel is only at US$200 million annually, Vapni considered this as a very small amount of trade exchange considering that Israel has expertise on agriculture technology, real estate, IT, defense (industry) and tourism.
In IT field, he said Israel is one of the countries that have a rich pool of good software developers. In fact, its government is spending huge money for incubation facilities and it likewise encourages the Venture Capital concept.
Cebu, which has made a name as a preferred IT hub in the Philippines, could attract Israeli software development companies to make the province as a manufacturing site.
“We don’t produce, we develop [IT] products. There are a lot of software companies in Israel that are looking for place as manufacturing site—for things they developed,” he said.
He mentioned that the developer of the first online-chat or Internet-wide instant messaging service called ICQ, was developed by an Israeli company called Maribilis, but is now owned by a US company, Time Warners.
Furthermore, the developer of the widely used technology gadget “flash disk” is also an Israeli.
He said the country is now actively looking at pushing trade relations with the Asian countries, because of its active trading with some like India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
Vapni said his government, through the Israel Embassy in the Philippines will strengthen trade relations with the business sector, starting to invite trade delegations from the Philippines to Israel and vice-versa.
Israel, a country in Western Asia located on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, has attracted a total of 50,000 Filipinos, most of them are working as caregivers.
He said of the 50,000 Filipinos now residing in Israel, 20 thousand entered the country “illegally.”
