Audrey Tang: Hi. Anything I can help you with?

Samir Hamrouni: Thank you so much for your time in spite of the busy schedule. I have a short question before I begin.

Audrey Tang: Please.

Samir Hamrouni: How much time do we have?

Audrey Tang: I don’t know, half an hour?

Samir Hamrouni: Yes, it’s OK. I will introduce what we are doing, and after, I will mention why I am here. Several countries around the world, for their economic development, created a tool called free zone. A free zone is a closed area in which we have customs exemption or suspension.

Samir Hamrouni: On top of it, we have some incentives. These incentives depend on the capacity of the country. Generally speaking, this is less tax on the company. What the country do, they offer ‑‑ in this closed space with customs suspension ‑‑ an exemption.

Samir Hamrouni: They invite investor to come. This investor pay less tax, they don’t pay customs. If the product is produced and re‑exported, no problem with the customs. If you want to introduce the product in the local market, you pay tax. This is OK.

Samir Hamrouni: This means that we have always customs, and depending on the capacity of the country, it is 50 percent less tax on the company, 100 percent, it depends on the country. I live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and they offer 100 percent tax‑free for companies.

Samir Hamrouni: I’m originally from Tunisia. Tunisia cannot afford that. During the first year, 100 percent tax‑free. The following three years, it is 50 percent and consecutively. In other countries like Colombia, Colombia has a huge problem of employment.

Samir Hamrouni: If you come, and you invest, and you create 10 jobs, you have five percent less tax. If you create one hundred, it depends. This is called incentives, and it depends on the capacity on the country. Today, according to the World Bank, entities like these, we have 3,500 free zones in 130 countries, which is huge.

Samir Hamrouni: These free zones support the third of the global trade. It is also very important. This is one of the objective of my visit. There is a need to facilitate this trade. To make platform, to create digital platform to facilitate this trade.

Samir Hamrouni: These zones also employ 70 million persons, which is three percent of the work global force. There is a need also to create good places for work, these people. In 2014, we launch this organization as per the Swiss law. We are based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Samir Hamrouni: This is the introduction of our organization. This means that we are an association, and as all the association, we have the typical objective, capacity building, training, business, platform, exchange of network, whatever. Business network, business‑to‑business platform. This is another also engagement I would like your help to do.

Audrey Tang: How can I help?

Samir Hamrouni: This is the introduction. How you can help? Several elements. I had the pleasure, and thank your ally for it. I visited your ministry of transport and communication. I visited your customs authority. I visited the export‑processing zone. I visited also your...

Ally Chang: Agriculture biotechnology Park.

Samir Hamrouni: Yes, and your port free zone. The objective I have in my mind and for this organization are the following. As you have made previously, you have companies here. A free zone is as healthy as the companies within the zones, are doing well and are doing business. There is a need. I started doing it slowly, slowly, but there is a need to create a business‑to‑business platform. This is the first need.

Samir Hamrouni: As I mentioned, Excellency, before, we have two million companies in this area. Five percent of these two million companies are multinationals. They don’t need us. The other 95 are micro, small, and medium enterprises, and these one needs us.

Samir Hamrouni: We need to create this business‑to‑business platform. I started working on it. I need to make it stronger. I need to make it more useful for member.

Samir Hamrouni: Before joining hand, I need your help. We need to make the best ever platform from business to business. This is one element.

Samir Hamrouni: It’s too large. The idea is yes, I need their know‑how, I need their technology, but I’m not only interested in business. I’m interested through this big platform and capacity building for the small, medium enterprises to create a community so they can speak, exchange best practice.

Samir Hamrouni: I’m also interested in another way. Today, you go to the almost 30 or 40 African country, and they register these companies with a pen and a paper. You go to other place, like we have in Dubai, and you have your smartphone and you can register the company.

Samir Hamrouni: We need also your help, and the capacity building, and your experience, your experience of your country, to create this online management of the companies. This is my two immediate needs. The idea it is another need is we have spoken a lot about smart cities.

Samir Hamrouni: There is a lot of elements of smartness within the city. At the end of the day, free zone, export‑processing zone, or free‑trade zone is a small city. Whatever we reach within the big city can be applied with this too.

Samir Hamrouni: Let’s say Shanghai Free Zone is 100 square kilometer. This is a city. Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, it is 75 square kilometers. Or even 10 hectares. If you have cars, if you have people, you need to build this smartness.

Samir Hamrouni: These are the main objective I have. I need to make my zones tech ready. I need to make my zones smart. I need to have the companies ‑‑ the small companies within the zones ‑‑ speaking, communicating, and doing business together. This is, Excellency, my immediate objective.

Samir Hamrouni: My other objective is a mid, long‑term one. As we put here, all these free zones are till certain point less tax collection for the country. It means you, to attract investor, you give them incentives. Till certain point, these incentives are privileges.

Samir Hamrouni: The question, what is in the society from these 3,500 free zones? Some countries like Costa Rica, like Uruguay, have done a very deep study. They said for each dollar we less collect, we create five dollars with investment. It’s OK.

Samir Hamrouni: Not all the country are able to do it, and this is not really, really real. The idea, I need my zones to give back to the society for the society to give them. For this, I give you an example. Three years ago, one free zone in Dubai, Dubai Silicon Oasis, I think they have 800 companies.

Samir Hamrouni: We went to the three big ones. I was managing there. We went to Schneider, Fujitsu, and Philips. With them, with half of the money from us, half of the money from them, and their knowledge, we created a fund. With this fund, we created an incubation center.

Samir Hamrouni: The idea, one of the way to return to the society is through entrepreneurship, an incubation center. It is a win‑win situation. Dubai Silicon Oasis, when they launch the incubation center, they incubated 100 local talent.

Samir Hamrouni: The following year, 30 of these young talent created 30 companies, which is also good for the free zone. The free zone has now new company. Also, it’s good for the population. This is, in few words, what I’m looking for.

Samir Hamrouni: This project, which is giving back to the society what the society give is called the free zone of the future. I brought some information with me. I called it prosperity. All the governments today are looking for the economic development as growth.

Samir Hamrouni: Economic development is not enough. We need to take countries to an upper level. I remember I had been in Nairobi, Kenya. Four minister of economy, myself, in one panel of discussion. The four minister of Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, and South Africa were saying that they have reached six percent growth GDP, seven percent.

Samir Hamrouni: The audience were people from this country, and they said they didn’t see anything from this growth. We need to move. We in Dubai, for example, we created a ministry of happiness. Let’s say there is a step between development and happiness, which is prosperity.

Samir Hamrouni: Prosperity is you create wealth, and this wealth is shared with the population. That is this. We need to upgrade the objective of the zone. Till today, we have been recognized as a tool for economic development. We need to improve using technology. We need to improve using business‑to‑business platform. We need to improve using smartness.

Samir Hamrouni: We have to do more. To have to do more is being free zone of the future. A free zone of the future as it is defined, Excellency, in the document I will give you, are three elements. One, the program is the following. Can I give you the program?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Samir Hamrouni: The projector shows other people that we were talking with. This is the program. Is called the Free Zone of the Future. To explain myself, Excellency, I have immediate need, and I have future project.

Samir Hamrouni: The future project is called Free Zone of the Future. It is called Prosperity. What is a Free Zone of the Future? It is a combination of three elements.

Audrey Tang: Best practices, innovation, and sustainability.

Samir Hamrouni: Yes. To become a free zone of the future, you should be the best place to do business in the country, you should be innovative, and you should be sustainable. This is how we will develop. I name it prosperity.

Samir Hamrouni: Each one of the three elements, Excellency, has three pillars. Here, we have observed that the 3,500 manager of the free zone are 45, 50‑years‑old people. They need an online education to upgrade their skills. There is a need.

Samir Hamrouni: Certification ‑‑ we need to protect goods. We need to protect intellectual property. We need to protect persons within the zone. Tech ready ‑‑ we need to use the smartness and the technology to make the management of the zones.

Samir Hamrouni: Today, we have been doing well as these 3,500 units called free zone. We have contributed, and everybody recognize that we contribute to the economic development.

Audrey Tang: I’ve read something like this in the TopLink section of the World Economic Forum. It’s referenced there.

Samir Hamrouni: It’s referenced. Now, we have also agreed that economic development is not enough for the people. We need another step. The other step is prosperity. This is why I launch this program. I call it the Free Zone of the Future. To become a free zone of the future, we need three elements. One, to be the best place to do business.

Audrey Tang: OK. You covered that one. I’m interested in the other two. [laughs]

Samir Hamrouni: Innovation ‑‑ we need to help entrepreneurship. For each one of my 3,500 units has a dream, should have an incubation center. It will be impressive if we can reach there. I mentioned that we have two million businesses within the free zones.

Samir Hamrouni: Just five percent are multinational. The other are micro, small, and medium enterprises. This is the real engine of innovation of development. We cannot do anything within the country if we don’t help this community.

Samir Hamrouni: Innovation in the management ‑‑ we cannot manage today a free zone in the same way we have been managing it in 30 years ago. No. The third pillar is sustainability. We understand by sustainability, clearly I have a certificate called Green Zone Certificate. We need to be friendly environment.

Samir Hamrouni: The same point, till today, Excellency, when we speak about zones, we speak about two elements. The free zone authority and the investor we attract. We forget one element which is the most important element of this, the worker.

Samir Hamrouni: Any free zone should be a good place to work. Quality of job, right of the worker, everything considered here. Finally, I need these 3,500 units to have a corporate social responsibility program in which we involve gender, we involve women, we involve kids. We give them back what we have from the society.

Samir Hamrouni: This is, Excellency, in few words, our project. I just have been with the Minister Foreign Affairs. I have been with the Fund for International Collaboration. We need also your support, your cooperation, your knowledge, your know‑how to materialize this project.

Audrey Tang: This sounds very good. What exactly is that I can help with the B2B platform? I imagine that you already have something in mind.

Samir Hamrouni: Yes.

Audrey Tang: You probably already have mockups or even a proof‑of‑concept system. What is it? Can I look at it somewhere?

Samir Hamrouni: As soon as I’m back to Dubai ‑‑ I’m flying this night, so I will reach Friday early morning. Friday and Saturday is our weekend in Dubai. Sunday, I will share with you the concept of our business‑to‑business platform.

Samir Hamrouni: I will share with you also the concept we have established for the smartness, the smart project. From there, you’ll let us know, if you don’t mind, how you can help us.

Audrey Tang: Right. My contribution, software and design‑wise, before I joined the government, was always on what we call the open world, the free software world, or the free culture world, which means that I essentially give away my copyright, my patents, and my trademarks. Well I don’t have any trademarks. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: In any case, the idea is that it’s free for everybody to share the intellectual contributions that I make. If any of the platforms makes use of the free software community’s contributions, including the one that I designed or my friends designed, then I will simply refer it to your technical team. That will be up to you to adopt it and then grow it as you want.

Audrey Tang: For my personal involvement, then the platform itself will have to be shared freely with everybody. That will be my condition. I’m pretty involved in knowledge management also, I’ve worked with multiple Silicon Valley companies that specialize in this.

Audrey Tang: One of the companies that I collaborated on ended up joining the PeopleFluent, the Bedford Group. They call it the PeopleFluent Mirror Suite. Just five months ago, I was still working on that. I can of course give some advice as an independent expert on the design that you are going to send me.

Audrey Tang: Beyond that, I’m not in charge of the smart city plan here in Taiwan. That is to say, I’m not a supervising minister of the Ministry of Transport and Communication. I’m less involved in the smart city plans. Of course, if it relates to your interest or your immediate involvement, I can refer it to the minister who you already met, Minister He-Chen.

Samir Hamrouni: We met with the deputy minister today.

Ally Chang: Chief Secretary.

Audrey Tang: You met with his Chief Secretary?

Samir Hamrouni: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: They already have your connection. I guess you don’t have to go through me for this then. We’ll be focusing on these two. I will wait for your designs and see how I can contribute.

Audrey Tang: Also, I’m the Social Enterprise Minister here. I’m very much in favor of this idea of a social return of investment or the prosperity based thing, because as you might already know, there was a plan a few years ago of a Free Economic Zone here in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: The plan really got a lot of suspicion from the civil society, because the society suspected that it comes at a cost of the right of their labor working force, and also at the right of the surrounding society. At that time, it was blocked.

Audrey Tang: There is a lot of popular sentiment in Taiwan in the sense that a small and medium‑sized enterprise must be founded at a principle of social return of investment, not just the shareholder. In fact, we are changing our company law just this year to reflect this fact, saying that any company can explicitly declare they’re not just for profit.

Audrey Tang: Like triple-bottom-line or double-bottom-line companies, they will be given an act to exist and declare publicly. What I’m saying is that when I look at SMEs, I see their social ROI. That’s the top of the bottom lines for me.

Audrey Tang: On the shareholder return, I think Taiwan did put a lot of emphasis on that in the previous years, which creates a need for a small startup to immediately give back return to the investors. That in turn gives a culture that is more afraid to fail.

Audrey Tang: If we are to be innovative, we must be unafraid to fail. One of the ways is to say even though the investment didn’t work, at least during the company existence, it created some value to the society.

Audrey Tang: If it’s a sustainable return, no matter how long the company lasts, maybe it’ll last just for six months, and then the founder can feel still proud, and find another company based on the same sustainability principle.

Audrey Tang: A few false starts, I think, is the best way to have a really good manager, a really good founder to thrive. It is our work, free zone or not, to make the startup culture here less afraid of failing. In that, I’m pretty aligned with the innovation and sustainability part.

Audrey Tang: The best‑in‑class practice, as I said, I’m less versed in the zone itself and the certification. That will be your specialty. I’m happy that you brought all of these concerns to us.

Samir Hamrouni: Perhaps I will need your help, and will share with you. We are creating this online platform for free zone management. Means when the person come and want to register a company, he will not run till today slowly, slowly.

Samir Hamrouni: A lot of government have what they call a single window, the one‑stop shop. You go to this place and this place. If you want to create a company you don’t have to the Ministry of Economy, to the City Hall, to the Ministry of Environment. In one place, you have all the ministry. This is what they call one‑stop shop.

Samir Hamrouni: I need to go beyond. I would like, with your help, this one‑stop shop, it will be an online one‑stop shop. You can register company, you can pay, you can do through this element. End of next week, I will share with you the concept we have.

Audrey Tang: The idea is that for cooperating countries, anyone can set up a local company at that territory through online‑only means. Is that the idea?

Samir Hamrouni: We can do it in several ways. One way is I create a tool. The tool is an online management. Let me say like this multinational companies, you create a program, and after a government come and buy it, and the government to use it should be updated to the local laws.

Samir Hamrouni: I told you the taxation is different from here and there, so this is the idea. Or something different. We prefer a tool that is commonly used by everybody, and on the top of it, each country will add its own need.

Samir Hamrouni: I’m much more favorable in having a common tool. It will help us to managing in a fair way all the companies.

Audrey Tang: Right, so not just the starting of the business, but the ongoing management of the business.

Samir Hamrouni: Ongoing management of the business.

Audrey Tang: Because if it’s just the starting of a business, of a one‑stop shop for example, the Silicon Valley company, Stripe, already has a product called Atlas, where you can go anywhere online and then automatically, they set up a US company, a US bank account, and the contact window, and everything automatically. You don’t even have to have a US bank account or US residence.

Samir Hamrouni: Yes, I heard about this example.

Audrey Tang: If it’s just for founding a company, you already have this. It’s difficult to think that it gets easier than the way Stripe already makes it. Even if you’re talking about the ongoing management of companies, of updating it to the latest version of the incentives of the local laws and so on, I will still suggest that you talk to these people.

Audrey Tang: I can also refer some other connections, but I will wait for your design documents.

Samir Hamrouni: I greatly appreciate your time. I think this is the best closing of my trip to your country. You have wonderful and beautiful country. Can I have a picture?

Audrey Tang: Of course. Just a second. All right.

Ally Chang: One, two, three, smile.

Samir Hamrouni: Thank you so much. This is for me. Thank you, Excellency, thank you so much.