UAE plans to invest in BRICS Bank and expand trade

The UAE plans to invest in the BRICS Bank and expand trade. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) sees its recent invitation to join BRICS as an opportunity to grow trade.

According to the country’s Economy Minister, Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, the country plans to invest more capital in the New Development Bank (NDB).

This move highlights the UAE’s strategic approach to international relations and economic development as it seeks to strengthen its ties with emerging economies while contributing to global financial institutions.

Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri emphasized in a Bloomberg Television interview that this move would not harm relations with wealthy Western nations.

“We will indeed push for more” and “actually” invest capital in the New Development Bank, Al Marri said, without specifying an amount.

The UAE, invited last week to join Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in the group’s first expansion since 2010, is the Persian Gulf’s second-largest economy and one of the few countries globally with a sovereign wealth fund exceeding US$1 trillion.

This positions the UAE to enhance the NDB’s impact.

The OPEC’s third-largest oil producer, after Saudi Arabia and Iraq—both also invited to join BRICS—the UAE will continue to develop trade with wealthy Western countries while boosting trade with the less developed nations of the Global South, Al Marri said.

The UAE, whose currency is pegged to the dollar and hosts US forces at an airbase outside Abu Dhabi, aims for peace and prosperity, which brings economic and trade benefits.

In the past two years, the Gulf nation has signed trade agreements with countries like Indonesia, Turkey, and Israel and agreed with India to use local currencies in transactions between the two countries.

China and India were the UAE’s biggest trading partners in 2022, followed by Japan and the US.

“Focusing on the Global South is the most important aspect we are concentrating on right now, and it will grow,” Al Marri said.

“By doubling down on foreign trade, we will focus on that.”

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