Thani bin Ahmed Al Zayoudi says UAE wants to be part of India’s $10 million export target.
Formal talks for the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) began on Thursday, with UAE Foreign Trade Minister Thani bin Ahmed Al Zayoudi saying the agreement was a natural extension of the traditionally strong bilateral ties, and the March meeting expressed confidence about. 2022 deadline for CEPA.
“Our relationship goes beyond the timeline and those agreements. For us the agreements are formalities, a showcase for the whole world,” he said Hindu.
The agreement with India is one of several being explored by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as it completes 50 years and bids to reshape its economic future. He added that the UAE is entering into equitable trade and economic partnership deals with countries such as the UK, Turkey, Kenya and South Korea.. He said that the High Level Joint Task Force on Investment, which will meet next week, has already managed to remove several hurdles.
The UAE hopes that CEPA, along with easier investment flows, will enable businesses from both countries to simultaneously exploit global opportunities given their synergies and complementarities in various sectors. “We want to be a part of the export target of $1 trillion set by the Ministry of Commerce of India,” the minister said.
Interview excerpts:
Before we discuss CEPA, can you give an overview of UAE’s overall trade relations and strategic partnership with the world as well as trade agreements?
The UAE is known as a trade hub for the region, and we are leveraging these business capabilities and skills to build more advanced, state-of-the-art infrastructure in roads, ports, airports, logistics and supply chain infrastructure such as warehouses and warehousing. managed to change. . Now we are moving towards e-commerce and digital trade. Going forward, as foreign trade is a key element of our economic development, one of the main things we are working on is the economic partnership agreements that we are just starting with the world. We picked a few countries from which we can start in the first phase – India is the main and the first country we started with and yesterday, I met Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry for CEPA. For us, India and the region, the UK, Turkey, South Korea, Kenya are countries with which we have strong trade ties with those countries and bilateral trade volumes of dirhams 260 billion, which we aim to double in the next five years. We look forward to these relations with India and I am sure it will be very useful for both the countries and the region as a whole.
Last week, the United Arab Emirates launched a “50K Projects” program to ring in a new phase of development? Can you tell us a little bit about that and how India fits into that vision?
As preparation for the celebration of our 50th anniversary, we embarked on initiatives and projects that will further our upcoming economic directions for the country. Foreign trade is getting the most attention from those initiatives. The agreement with India is also a part of it. We are targeting 10 countries for our ten regions. I am sure this is going to align with the interests of Indian and UAE businesses, and we can work together to explore third country markets and expand our overseas business. Enhancing the role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and micro-SMEs, encouraging many unicorns in the coming years just like in India… There are many similarities in the work we are doing. Giving a strong message to the Indian community, the residency system is also being reformed. We have around 3.5 million Indians in the UAE who call it their home, so we would like to make sure the residence system is appropriate. Also, we have taken some other initiatives, bringing all the systems in one window to make it easier for the investors to get the desired information, similar to the system launched in India yesterday. So I see a lot of similarities… we can work on many things together.
Gems and jewelery and petroleum products are the traditional mainstays of India-UAE trade relations. What are the new areas of interest that the UAE would like to trade with India more freely in both the export and import basket?
We have recently seen a reduction in the dependence on those two areas in trade between the two countries. Diversification is already taking place in other sectors. Bilateral non-oil trade stands at $40 billion and we are aiming to take it to $100 billion once CEPA is finalized and signed. For us, as the ninth largest investor in India, we want to invest more towards India in targeted promising areas. The areas we’ll be talking about at CEPA are services, maritime transportation, power, infrastructure, real estate, health care and telecommunications, but when it comes to our business, we’re talking about food security, health equipment and care, Talking about technical and industrial equipment. We are certainly going to be a natural partner for India, and vice versa. The same applies to petroleum, precious metals, minerals, chemicals, where we complement each other. We want to be part of the one trillion dollar target for exports that the (Indian) commerce ministry has set. in foreign trade.
What are the considerations for investment, apart from closer business ties, under the upcoming Economic Partnership Agreement? Both countries are investing a lot in each other’s market.
Investments, of course, there will be CEPA negotiations with our finance ministries discussing these issues and a meeting of the High Level Joint Committee on Investment, which will meet next week. So, whatever discussion happens this week will continue on that forum next week. The investment ecosystem in India is still attractive to our Sovereign Wealth Funds and private players. We want to make our ecosystem attractive and easily accessible to Indian businessmen. Our FDI in India so far reached $18 billion last year and we will continue to explore this along with our Sovereign Wealth Fund’s plan to invest more in India.
You met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today. What were the major areas of discussion?
We would like to explore the financial system you have here, which includes various bond markets, financial institutions… This is an experience we would like to see and test how to integrate it into our system. We discussed the potential of the futuristic fintech sector and how we can complement each other. The financial services sector has grown dramatically and was one of the growing sectors during the pandemic and the lockdown.
We also discussed cryptocurrencies and how we can begin the preparation work for the currencies of the future. To ensure that we take this to the next level, there will be a task force for these subjects. The task force will look at fintech and those business opportunities and how can we share those experiences at scale, how can we implement some of the practices that you guys are deploying in India and do it in UAE and vice versa How can, and how can we take advantage of regulatory systems and their expansion not only in India and UAE but also cover a wider area within our region – Exploring Africa, CIS countries and South Asia.
We have invited Her Excellency, the Minister of Finance (Ms Sitharaman), as well as India’s business community, to explore the ICT technologies on display at the Dubai Expo for the coming six months.
How confident are both sides of meeting the March 2022 deadline as it takes just six months to work out the details and ratify the agreement?
Our relationship is beyond time limits and those agreements. For us agreements are formalities, a demonstration to the whole world. During the early stages of the pandemic, we had the full support of the Indian government, some healthcare expertise and medicines to support the UAE. Here during the second wave, we sent a lot of our oxygen supplies and ventilators to Indian communities. So our relationship is beyond agreement. Yes, many people are saying that six months is a tough goal. But for us, it is a natural extension of our strategic relationship, and I really believe we will meet those deadlines.
What kind of duty concessions are likely to be given for CEPA?
This is going to be discussed now. What we have learned over the past few months with the High-Level Working Joint Force on Investment, chaired by His Highness Sheikh Hamid bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, and Indian Minister Piyush Goyal, is that they have managed investments. To overcome so many obstacles. I am sure CEPA is going to continue this spirit of working together, opening up and even going beyond those barriers. Of course there are obstacles headaches in our way, but our relationship goes beyond business barriers.
One last thing that we’re trying to work on right now is that we’re going to be very specific in our investments. With this relationship the traditional sectors are going to transform and evolve, but we want to make sure that we are focusing on those sectors like agri-tech, artificial intelligence, healthcare, pharma and renewable, these are the areas of the future. who will bring more value to our relationship. We want to bring those areas up so that we can add more value to the entire region. The agreement is another way to foster traditionally strong strategic ties.
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