Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 24 October 2001

Comtrust, the e-business infrastructure unit of Etisalat and Gulf e-business International Conference (GEBIC), an organization working under patronage of the Federation of GCC Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FGCCI), announce their intention to enter into a strategic partnership using Comtrust Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services to bring trust to e-business activities of GEBIC throughout the GCC region.

FGCCI, with membership of 30 chambers from across the region, covering more than 500,000 in the region, is embarking upon a major initiative to launch an e-business marketplace for its member community. The e-marketplace, which is now in the final stages of development, will be managed and operated by GEBIC. The up-coming e-marketplace will provide a shared resource that will allow members access to a wide range of services including; database of wide variety of information covering companies, products and services; business opportunities and electronic document transfer facility.

Abdullah Samhan, CEO of GEBIC says that the launch of the e-marketplace will mark a major step forward for the region’s business community in terms of services that can be provided to them.

“If we do not create the framework of the Common E-marketplace in the region to act as one e-marketplace, we are going to lose ability to compete and to exist in the New Economy,” he said. “The business processes that form the Trade Cycle are still largely paper driven. Our estimate is that some thousands of documents are generated on a daily basis. The need to facilitate better collaboration among organizations who are involved with the Trade Cycle was being felt for a long time. The move towards web-based services will streamline these processes, remove majority of paperwork and improve efficiencies significantly. We are delighted to enter into a partnership with Comtrust for the provisioning of PKI services, which will provide a secure communication channel between the members of the business community in all areas of online business activities”, said Samhan.

Omran Sultan Al Owais, Comtrust’s General Manager said, “partnership with GEBIC would go a long way in expanding geographic coverage for Comtrust PKI services throughout the GCC region. By combining public key cryptography, digital signatures and trusted third party role of Comtrust, PKI services will help GEBIC create secure communications between business partners, authenticate identities before allowing access to critical business intelligence and build trust in business activities in the new economy era”.

Abdullah Samhan concluded: “The deal with Comtrust was accomplished after lengthy discussions with a number of major Western PKI providers. Comtrust was found to have numerous advantages over these international organizations, namely flexibility, local expertise, local presence and unrivalled regional knowledge. In addition, Comtrust has a long-term commitment to helping businesses such as ours and the FGCCI succeed. I am delighted to work with them”.