Dubai: More than 1,200 delegates from five Indian states are expected to take part in the second India-UAE Partnership Summit 2018 (IUPS) to be held in Dubai next month.
The two-day event on October 30 and 31 is aimed at attracting investments into education, small- and medium-sized enterprises and skills development into five states of Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Punjab and West Bengal.
It has been organised by the Business Leaders Forum (BLF), in partnership with the Indian consulate.
The emirates of Abu Dhabi and Sharjah are joining the IUPS to showcase their projects to Indian investors.
Navdeep Singh Suri, India’s ambassador to the UAE, said the summit was an important step in encouraging investments into specific sectors and projects being promoted by the participating states.
“The summit will add fresh [ideas] to the partnership, to help see which areas [of cooperation] we can take it forward,” he said.
In October, he said, a high-level task force on investment between India and the UAE will take place in Mumbai while India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will be here before the end of the year for a joint commission meeting.
“That shows you the level of intensity and engagement. The road as we see of our investment and of our governments is to do our maximum to facilitate the trade and investment environment,” he said.
The UAE is the tenth largest FDI source market for India with cumulative FDI reaching $4.76 billion in the last 17 years from April 2000 until March 2017.
He added that foreign direct investment (FDI) in India increased more than $61 billion in 2017-18.
Juma Al Kait, assistant Under-secretary of the UAE Ministry of Economy, said that everyone, especially the governments of the two countries, is keen to take the India-UAE relations to a completely new level.
“We have opened the doors to the private sectors to discover new areas of cooperation in different sectors,” he said.
Vipul, Consul General of India, said that four states participated in the first edition and “we are building on that success to attract more investment into India. A BLF team went to Andhra Pradesh to sign a memorandum of understanding for a $1.41b crowdfunding private sector investment to develop a 500 acres project last month.”
