Abu Dhabi: Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is talking to many partners from the UAE to invest in Russia, a senior representative of the Fund told Gulf News.

“Russia is a growing market. The growth is picking up in 2017 with the estimate of 2 per cent for the whole year, but many sectors are growing even faster due to the macroeconomic trends and the support by the government. We are talking to many partners from the UAE for joint investment,” said the representative.

He said Mubadala Investment Company committed investments of up to $6 billion (Dh22 billion) in Russia in renewables, infrastructure, ports and airports and other sectors.

“With Mubadala, one of our first partners since RDIF started its operations, we closed and approved over 30 deals and they made a commitment of up to $6 billion to invest in Russia. They will be joining us in investing in various sectors of the economy and expect more cooperation from them in future.”

The Russian Direct Investment Fund is Russia’s sovereign wealth fund established by the Russian government in June 2011 to make equity investments in high-growth sectors of the Russian economy. It has $40 billion of capital under management.

DP World also signed a $2 billion agreement to jointly invest in Russian infrastructure mainly in ports, logistics.

Good cooperation

The Fund also sees opportunities in Saudi Arabia as its economy opens for foreign direct investments.

“It’s a quickly growing market and we see potential there as well. We have very good cooperation with Saudi Arabian funds such as Public Investment Fund (PIF) which has already invested in a number of attractive projects in Russia.”

RDIF and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia have deployed and agreed to invest more than $1 billion in the Russian public markets and in more than eight private projects across sectors such as petrochemicals, power, logistics, transport infrastructure and retail, the two firms announced earlier this year.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund together with its partners will also be participating and bringing Russian companies to the project to create Neom, a city of the future which was unveiled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman recently.