Women Entrepreneurs Network for Development Association (WEND), an association of Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs, has planned to establish a regional office in Dubai to help its members gain access to the Middle East market.
The WEND is participating in the six-month-long World Expo 2020 that is being held in Dubai from October 1, 2021, till March 31, 2022, according to a press release.
The regional office will explore market opportunities in each of the target segments, help develop a database of potential clientele and initiate match-making networking and buyer-seller meetings so that Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs can acquire new customers, develop new markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries and start exporting products to the region, it said.
More than 576,000 women entrepreneurs represent 7.2 per cent of the 8 million business establishments in Bangladesh. They are a major contributor to the country’s economy. Women form the majority workforce in the country’s readymade garments industry that fetches US$31.45 billion a year.
The UAE is host to more than one million Bangladeshi expatriates, representing more than 11 per cent of the UAE’s population, which includes businessmen, professionals, skilled, semi-skilled workers, who collectively remit more than US$2.5 billion remittances to Bangladesh economy.
Bangladeshi expatriates own more than 75,000 businesses in the UAE and employ more than 200,000 Bangladeshis in the UAE.
Its members have also started the process of setting up their companies in the UAE to benefit from the growing opportunities in the Middle East, it said.
The release said a 15-member delegation of women entrepreneurs from WEND, led by President Dr Nadia Binte Amin, is currently visiting Dubai, to attend the World Expo 2020, from November 19 to 25, 2021. The delegation was invited to the expo by the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB).
