India-UAE business forum in Mumbai to leverage opportunities in key sectors

Event brings together senior officials and key business leaders

Top Stories

UAE announces 2-month grace period for residence visa violators

UAE announces fee refund for tax service charges from August 1

Paid parking in Dubai: Residents face up to Dh4,000 extra yearly costs when new rates kick in

A view of Jebel Ali Port. The UAE's non-oil trade with India reached $28.2 billion in the first six months of 2024. — File photo

Published: Mon 9 Sep 2024, 12:12 PM

The India-UAE Business Forum is set to explore mutually beneficial trade, investment and partnership opportunities when it takes place in Mumbai on September 10.

Organized by the UAE’s Ministry of Economy in collaboration with the UAE Embassy in New Delhi and India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the event will gather government officials, business leaders, industrialists and entrepreneurs at the Oberoi Hotel as part of bilateral efforts to leverage the opportunities created by the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which came into force in May, 2022.

Under the theme “Beyond Cepa: Innovation and Future-Ready Economies”, the forum will showcase the range of sectors that are ripe for private-sector collaboration, with a particular focus on the potential of healthcare, biotechnology, renewable energy, sustainability, AI, logistics and supply chains, and agricultural technology. It will be attended Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade, who is heading a high-level UAE delegation.

Al Zeyoudi said: “The India-UAE Business Forum is another important opportunity to bring our business leaders together to discuss areas of mutual benefit, and develop the networks that will support our respective economic growth and diversification objectives. The forum will build on the consistent rise in bilateral non-oil trade, which reached $28.2 billion in the first six months of 2024 – a 9.8 per cent increase on the same period in 2023 and set against a marked decline in trade growth around the world in H1 2024. The figures underline the benefits of the UAE-India Cepa, which has proved to be a major driver of industrial output, employment and global competitiveness, and provide the platform for greater collaboration in the months and years ahead.”

The forum’s panels reflect the breadth of opportunity in front the private sector. They include “Healthcare and Biotechnology: Pioneering the Future of Medicine”, which will focus on ways the UAE and India can leverage the Cepa to develop partnerships in biotechnology, genomic medicine, AI-driven healthcare, digital health, and pharmaceutical research.

The session on AI and emerging technologies will seek to explore how these tools can be developed and the areas that can benefit from them, while the session “Renewable Energy & Sustainability: Pioneering the Green Revolution” will help showcase the UAE’s pioneering work in delivering wind, solar and geothermal solutions across the developing world. Other sessions discuss opportunities in logistics and agricultural technology and sustainable farming practices.

The UAE-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was the first part of the UAE’s new foreign trade agenda that sought to strengthen ties with strategically important nations around the world. Following its implementation in May 2022, businesses in both countries are benefitting from a reduction or removal of tariffs on more than 80 percent of products, the removal of unnecessary barriers to trade and the harmonization of customs regulations and processes.