Ministry moves to standardise trade practices in UAE

Dubai: The UAE Ministry of Economy (MoE) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the concerned government agencies for the implementation of the Uniform Commercial Register project across the country.

This is a crucial first step in realising the programme at the national level after a projects management team from the ministry visited the different emirates to explain the advantages of the programme.

Hamid Bin Butti Al Mahiri, MoE's assistant undersecretary, said: "We expect to sign the contract with different emirates next month. This is part of the efforts to standardise business activities across all sectors in the country."

The Uniform Commercial Register project is the first of its kind in the UAE through which the MoE will link the electronic systems of economic departments, chambers of commerce and local municipalities in each emirate with a central system managed by it.

This will improve efficiency in organising the registration of trade names at the national level, and ensure there is no duplication of registration in any of the emirates, providing a Uniform Investor's Register across the country.

The project is also important in building centralised databases, which will allow the ministry to prepare special reports about the size and number of the investors in the country.

Over the last three years, the ministry has invested around Dh20 million in various strategic technical projects for developing its infrastructure in the technical field.