Sulaymaniyah International Trade Fair

Over 260 companies from 18 countries including Turkey, Iran, China, and USA came to display their products and to make business deals. They represented many sectors such as electronics, automotive distribution (Toyota and Nissan), water bottling, cement, industrial manufacturing, telecommunication, consulting, banking, technology, cellular communications, trading, steel, advertisings, carpeting, and retail. Approximately 10,000/day people attended the event. A spokesperson for the Sulaymaniyah CoCI was quoted in AKNews as saying: “The agreements signed during the show are worth around $50 million, excluding the joint ventures to be signed in the future.”

The Sulaymaniyah Business Information Center (S-BIC) participated in the trade fair by helping local entrepreneurs to market their products at this annual expo. The S-BIC is one of the 16 Small Business Development Centers established and supported with assistance from the USAID Provincial Economic Growth Program, Tijara. Many of these entrepreneurs had participated in pervious trade shows and realize the importance of using these events to market and sell their products. The S-BIC has facilitated marketing and awareness training explaining how important packaging and marketing is to reach new customers. One example was a beekeeper who came to the event his first year with a variety of standard honey and queen honey (high quality), and within a year landed new business with a very large confectionary and pastry shop in Baghdad. The beekeeper is now selling 30 kilos at a time to this confectioner. The S-BIC sponsored a booth where many small businesses displayed their products like honey and sweets from natural ingredients, handmade garments, and other accessories made by women. This booth was visited by companies from Turkey and Iraqi companies such as PECC (Progressive Expo and Conferences Company) and Shams Alrafiddain (Kirkuk).

This year S-BIC also represented and ran the booth for the Sulaymaniyah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, providing a great opportunity to introduce and present BIC activities and its new agreement with USAID-Tijara.