UAE Pursues Industrial Diversification Policy
Expands Cooperation in Future New Industry Sectors
[Asia Economy Reporter Han Yeju] KOTRA announced on the 17th that it held the 'Korea-UAE Business Consultation Meeting' in Abu Dhabi, UAE, coinciding with President Yoon Suk-yeol's state visit to the UAE.
The UAE ranks 5th in the world in oil reserves and is a resource-rich country, but it has long pursued an industrial diversification policy to break away from an oil-dependent economic structure. In particular, last year, the UAE government launched the 'Make it Emirates Program' to foster manufacturing and further accelerate industrial diversification. The Make it Emirates Program aims to expand from petrochemicals, aluminum, and steel sectors to food processing, machinery, automotive parts, and aerospace, targeting annual exports of advanced technology products worth 4 billion USD.
Accordingly, taking this state visit as an opportunity, the two countries plan to actively respond to the UAE's industrial diversification policy and expand economic cooperation fields between the two countries from existing energy, defense, and nuclear power to new industries such as aviation and aerospace, smart cities, agriculture (smart farms), and ICT. Through this, Korea also aims to lead export expansion and economic revitalization to overcome the current complex crisis. The 'Korea-UAE Business Consultation Meeting' was planned as a flagship event to inform companies of the strategic economic cooperation strengthening will between the two countries.
KOTRA held the "Korea-UAE Business Consultation Meeting" on the 16th in Abu Dhabi, UAE, coinciding with President Yoon Suk-yeol's state visit to the UAE. The photo shows the overall view of the event venue. [Photo by KOTRA]
This consultation meeting involved 36 Korean companies from various fields such as smart city technology, modular vertical farm solutions (smart farms), nuclear power and power equipment, solid fuel production plants using municipal waste (environmental industry), cloud services (ICT), car rental reservation platforms (service industry), and defense industry, and 105 UAE buyers, conducting a total of 257 one-on-one business consultations.
More than 90% of the participating companies were small and medium-sized innovative enterprises, and besides export consultations, they discussed various forms of business partnerships such as technology cooperation, joint market entry, and investment attraction, with export contracts worth approximately 11 million USD expected.
Yoo Jung-yeol, President of KOTRA, said, "This consultation meeting was prepared to actively utilize the UAE's policy cooperation demand to diversify cooperation fields while using it as a lever to enter promising markets such as the UAE and the Middle East market. KOTRA will do its best to continue the New Middle East boom in various fields through close follow-up support for participating companies even after the consultation meeting."
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