'Made in UAE' tag needs 40% local content

The UAE said yesterday that products claiming to be 'Made in the UAE' must have at least 40 per cent of their value added within the country.

This is part of the UAE's drive to sign a series of free trade agreements (FTAs), including that with the US for which talks are currently on.

The Rules of Origin Committee yesterday said the local content rule is one of the three main conditions for classifying an item as a national product.

The three conditions are: All the ingredients should be locally made, the value added onto the product should not be less than 40 per cent and when a finished product is made in the country, even though it is manufactured from imported raw material, it is considered a local product.

Several other formalities, including the official forms that will be used after the FTAs have been agreed upon by the Rules of Origin committee.

The agreement was arrived at a recent meeting attended by representatives of the Ministry of

Finance and Industry (Mofi), Ministry of Power, Ministry of Agriculture and the Federal Customs Authority.

"Upholding the country's vision is critical in all that we do and this will therefore form the basis of any agreement that we intend to conclude," said Saeed Abdullah Al Rukn, Deputy Director of the Department of Industrial Development (DID) at Mofi.

Al Rukn confirmed that unifying the forms for the Rules of Origin for all agreements that UAE is negotiating will help converge the mechanism of work, so that the UAE has a clear basis of argument while conducting the negotiations.

Mofi has held several meetings with the industrial sectors to take into consideration their points of view, he said.

The participants also discussed the items on the agenda that the technical committee will embark upon while participating in the meetings to be held with the European Union in Riyadh on Monday as part of the ongoing GCC-Europe FTA negotiations.