Meeting with Managing Director of Emaar Properties Mohamed Ali Alabbar

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko met with Mohamed Ali Alabbar, Managing Director of the Emirati company Emaar Properties, on 7 June, to discuss the Northern Waterfront project in Minsk and cooperation in the information technology sector.

“I am glad to meet with you again. You have long been a friend of Belarus. You come here often. We appreciate such an approach to work. You are always welcome in Belarus, especially since you come with specific proposals every time. Of course, today we will focus mostly on our main project - Northern Waterfront - that you intend to implement. This is a project of a huge scale. I think no other projects in Belarus have been as big as this one,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.

Speaking about cooperation in information technology Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “You pay great attention to this sector. I know that the Emirates have made significant progress in this area. I am grateful to you for arranging the meeting with leading experts in artificial intelligence in the Emirates. Back then I realized that Belarus still had a lot of work to do to advance to the level that you achieved together with specialists from around the world.”

“In addition to these major projects, I remember our meetings and agreements, discussions of other projects that could be implemented here, in Belarus, by representatives of big business from the Emirates. If you are interested, we are ready to revisit these projects, including projects in agriculture, food (a very topical issue now) and many other projects that we once discussed,” the President added.

Mohamed Ali Alabbar thanked the Belarusian head of state for the meeting and warm welcome: “Thank you very much for the special hospitality you offer. This hospitality is not even towards an ordinary guest, but a friend and brother. It always touches my heart.”

“This hospitality is relative however. You have been here for a long time; in fact, you can already be considered a citizen of Belarus,” Aleksandr Lukashenko replied.

In his turn, Mohamed Ali Alabbar highly appreciated the state support of the IT sector in Belarus: “What you have done is important for the world. Back then you paid a lot of attention to the High-Tech Park, and at that time it was just the beginning. Today we see that technology drives the development of the entire world. If we take the population of Belarus and correlate it with the development of IT services that the country exports, this will be much higher in comparison with many Western countries,” the Arab investor said.