Dubai: Australia’s Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, wants the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes the UAE, to make a regional free trade agreement a top priority.
“One of my key objectives is to try and encourage the Gulf Cooperation Council to put Australia in the top two for the free trade negotiations that … are about to begin,” the minister said in Dubai on Sunday at the beginning of a weeklong regional visit.
The minister is in the UAE for the third time as part of a trade delegation that includes executives from Qantas, ANZ Bank, the National Bank of Australia and Macquarie Group. Robb will meet with counterparts in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar along with the GCC whom he said he will push the free trade agreement with.
“My intention this week is to try and convince the GCC and all the member countries that it would be to both our interests,” Robb said.
Australia had bilateral free trade talks with the UAE in 2005 when Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi was minister of foreign trade. The talks were later suspended in the 2009 when the GCC bloc took over the free trade agreement negotiations of its six members.
Asked about the obstacles to sealing an agreement, Robb said: “It’s a question of how they [the Gulf] want to see the priorities [but] I understand they’re ready.”
Projects
Australia is looking to attract investment from the Gulf States for $125 billion (Dh459 billion) in road, tunnel, freight rail projects in the pipeline, which Robb said, are “particularly appropriate for so many of the investment companies and the funds that are here in the UAE and other parts of the Gulf”.
The UAE, which Robb said, has “become a very significant trade partner”, has invested $17 billion in Australia through sovereign wealth funds and other vehicles.
There are 350 Australian companies, predominantly in the services industry, in the UAE with more than 16,000 Australian’s living in the country. “The opportunity to extend that is enormous,” Robb said.
Last year, Australia signed free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea.