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2,000 Firms from 106 Countries Start Operations at Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone

2,000 Firms from 106 Countries Start Operations at Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone
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2,000 Firms from 106 Countries Start Operations at Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone

2,000 Firms from 106 Countries Start Operations at Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone

Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone (SPC Free Zone) has announced that in 2021, it witnessed impressive growth in the number of new company registrations with a total of 2,000 new companies from across 106 countries, mainly from the UK, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Lebanon, Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.

Stakeholders in the education and publishing sectors, and creative sector players such as translation agencies and linguistic editing offices, have leveraged SPC Free Zone’s nurturing and supportive environment and advanced infrastructure to conduct business and expand operations in the region in 2021, it said.

According to WAM, the number of newly registered publishing companies and allied businesses have risen over the previous year. This reflects the emirate’s ongoing efforts to attract investments in diverse economic sectors, including creative industries, through the free zone’s portfolio of advanced services and state-of-the-art facilities that cater to investors’ needs.

The launch of several initiatives to attract investors and cultural and academic entities to set base in the emirate has seen SPC Free Zone successfully strengthen its leading position as a driver of economic growth and diversification and become a haven for entrepreneurs across a spectrum of creative industries.

Covering an area of 40,000 square meters, SPC provides 600 furnished offices for publishing entrepreneurs and 6,000 square meters of space for investors planning to create their own spaces. It also houses more than 20 conference rooms, stores, service facilities, and a public administration branch of the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship to speed up investor visa processing.

Open 24/7, SPC Free Zone offers investors a wide range of benefits, including 100 percent foreign ownership for all nationalities, 100 percent repatriation of capital, 100 percent exemption from personal income tax, corporate tax, import and export tax, as well as access to all other services at cost-effective rates, including manpower, energy, living, printing, and logistics.

Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone was awarded the Quality Management System Certificate (ISO 9001:2015) in 2021 to recognize its excellence as a business incubator and for providing a supportive environment for investors and start-ups in the publishing and allied sectors.

In 2021, SPC Free Zone signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Mashreq Bank to offer priority access to various financial and banking services to investors and entrepreneurs in different market sectors.

Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri, Chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA), said that under the directives of Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, the emirate has emerged as a leading and pioneering city that supports investments in the creative sector and provides world-class infrastructure for entrepreneurs.

He added, "The achievements of Sharjah in the publishing sector are paving the way for the promotion of creativity and innovation and enhancing the emirate’s position as a nurturing economic ecosystem that invests in knowledge and culture and attracts publishers and bookmakers to the emirate to set up a business and expand to international markets."

Director of Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone (SPC Free Zone) Salim Omar Salim noted that the increasing number of investors wanting to start their business in the free zone is a testament to Sharjah’s status as a leading knowledge capital of the world and its successful efforts in creating an inclusive ecosystem for regional and international publishers.

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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo

African elephants are Earth's largest land animals, remarkable mammals that are very intelligent and highly social. They also are in peril. Fresh evidence of this comes in a study that documents alarming population declines at numerous sites across the continent over about a half century.

Researchers unveiled on Monday what they called the most comprehensive assessment of the status of the two African elephant species - the savanna elephant and forest elephant - using data on population surveys conducted at 475 sites in 37 countries from 1964 through 2016.

The savanna elephant populations fell by about 70% on average at the surveyed sites and the forest elephant populations dropped by about 90% on average at the surveyed sites, with poaching and habitat loss the main drivers. All told, there was a 77% population decrease on average at the various surveyed sites, spanning both species, Reuters reported.

Elephants vanished at some sites while their populations increased in other places thanks to conservation efforts.

"A lot of the lost populations won't come back, and many low-density populations face continued pressures. We likely will lose more populations going forward," said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University professor of wildlife conservation and chair of the scientific board of the conservation group Save the Elephants, who helped lead the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Poaching typically involves people killing elephants for their tusks, which are sold illegally on an international black market driven mostly by ivory demand in China and other parts of Asia. Agricultural expansion is the top factor in habitat loss.

The forest elephant population is estimated to be about a third that of savanna elephants. Poaching has affected forest elephants disproportionately and has ravaged populations of both species in northern and eastern Africa.

"We have lost a number of elephant populations across many countries, but the northern Sahel region of Africa - for example in Mali, Chad and Nigeria - has been particularly hard hit. High pressure and limited protection have culminated in populations being extirpated," Wittemyer said.

But in southern Africa, elephant populations rose at 42% of the surveyed sites.

"We have seen real success in a number of places across Africa, but particularly in southern Africa, with strong growth in populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For populations showing positive trends, we have had active stewardship and management by the governments or outside groups that have taken on a management role," Wittemyer said.

The study did not track a continent-wide population tally because the various surveys employed different methodologies over different time frames to estimate local elephant population density, making a unified head count impossible. Instead, it assessed population trends at each of the surveyed sites.

A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period. It remains the most recent comprehensive continent-wide estimate.

"The loss of large mammals is a significant ecological issue for Africa and the planet," said conservation ecologist and study co-author Dave Balfour, a research associate in the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The world's third extant elephant species, the slightly smaller Asian elephant, faces its own population crisis, with similar factors at play as in Africa.

Of African elephants, Wittemyer said, "While the trends are not good, it is important to recognize the successes we have had and continue to have. Learning how and where we can be successful in conserving elephants is as important as recognizing the severity of the decline they have experienced."

Wittemyer added of these elephants: "Not only one of the most sentient and intelligent species we share the planet with, but also an incredibly important part of ecosystems in Africa that structures the balance between forest and grasslands, serves as a critical disperser of seeds, and is a species on which a multitude of other species depend on for survival."