DUBAI: Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy, said today that the UAE’s sound economic infrastructure and business-friendly environment has made it an ideal partner for the world’s commercial interests.
“The considerable economic resilience of the UAE has helped minimise the impact of regional instability on our economy, and enabled us to continue with the development of our country. Growth will continue to rise over the next several years as the UAE continues to meet its economic development diversification targets,” he said while opening the Global Trade Development Week at Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai.
The three-day event brings together 600 influential business and government leaders from over 90 countries to discuss how to tackle today’s most challenging trade and development issues.
“We all agree that trade is a vital engine of economic growth that creates quality jobs. However we need to remove barriers to trade that hamper economic growth, whilst at the same time facilitate trade at borders, which needs both domestic reform and international cooperation and the world is looking forward to move ahead in the implementation of the new Trade Facilitation Agreement in WTO,” the minister said.
“The macroeconomic outlook is positive. Economic growth is expected at 4.8 per cent in 2014 and about 4.5 per cent in coming years, supported by a number of mega-projects announced over the past 18 months and the successful bid for the World Expo 2020. The GDP in 2013 was US$402 billion. The value of foreign direct investments stock in the UAE by the end of 2013 reached $105.5 billion, while the value of our investments abroad by the end of 2013 amounted to $63 billion,” the Minister continued.
Speaking about the UAE knowledge and innovation initiative, INNOVATIVE, Al Mansouri said, “We target to acquaint the economy for a step further towards INNOVATIVE. In this regard, it is our aim to have a 5 per cent contribution from knowledge economy and innovation to the GDP by 2021.”
