$50 billion in non-oil trade between the UAE and India in 2020. It’s a big number among two of the world’s fastest-growing economies, marking a 10 percent increase from 2021.
The level of trade exchange between the two countries is the result of the Comprehensive Economic Agreement signed between the UAE and India in February 2022, which entered into force in May of that year.
The agreement outlined a new roadmap that will contribute to supporting sustainable economic growth in the two countries, as described by UAE Minister of Economy Abdullah BinTouq Al Marri during his participation in the World Business Summit in India on Saturday.
One of the most prominent advantages of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is the elimination of tariffs on more than 80 percent of UAE and Indian goods.
There is a plan to eliminate all 10,000 tariffs between the two countries within 10 years, which would boost growth and increase joint trade and investments.
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The agreement also provides enhanced market access for service providers across 11 key sectors and more than 100 sub-sectors, including digital commerce and intellectual property rights.
The agreement is expected to boost non-oil trade between the two countries to $100 billion in five years from $60 billion in 2021.
The deal, which is part of the UAE’s strategy to promote trade, is expected to add 1.7 percent, or $8.9 billion, to the UAE’s GDP and boost its exports by 1.5 percent, or $7.6 billion, by 2030.
The UAE is India’s third-largest global trading partner, while the South Asian country is its second-largest trading partner.
The UAE is keen to increase its investments in India in the coming period in various sectors of common interest, especially as the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds have invested $ 10 billion in renewable energy, telecommunications, road infrastructure, real estate, and startups, bin Touq said.
India’s ambassador to the UAE, Sunjay Sudhir, said last month that in the first eight months since its implementation, trade had risen by 30 percent, putting the two countries on track to achieve $88 billion in trade in the fiscal year.
In addition, Indian investments are constantly increasing in the UAE, with 11,000 new Indian companies registered in 2022, bringing the total number of Indian companies in the UAE to more than 83,000.
On the occasion of the year of the signing of the agreement, the Minister of State for Foreign Trade of the UAE, Thani Al Zeyoudi, and the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, said in a joint article, that the UAE-India partnership will ensure the ability of the two countries to benefit from the changing global economic map, especially the pivotal role that Asia will play in the global economic landscape.
They stressed that the agreement did not represent a new economic era as much as it constituted the logical next step for two countries whose histories have become indelibly intertwined, as consensus builds around the extreme importance of the agreement in a difficult economic environment.
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