India has invited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a special guest to the G20 summit to be held in 2023 in New Delhi.
As president and host of the G20 summit to be held in 2023, India has invited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a special invitee to the summit in New Delhi.
This message was conveyed by the External Affairs Minister (EAM), Dr. S Jaishankar to the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan during their bilateral talks in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Both the ministers reviewed the continuous “progress” in bilateral relations across different domains, since the 14th Joint Commission Meeting held by them in September 2022. “They appreciated the progress in the bilateral relationship, especially in trade, investment, consular matters, education and food security,” said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
The relationship between India and the UAE has seen transformational changes since 2014. India and UAE have projected to surpass bilateral trade worth USD 88 billion this year. After the USA and China, the UAE became India’s 3rd largest trading partner.
“Both ministers noted that bilateral trade has shown appreciable growth under the CEPA Agreement which came into force on May 1, 2022. India’s exports to UAE between April-September 2022 were about USD 16 billion, which was an increase of 24% year-to-year, while India’s imports increased 38% to reach USD 28.4 billion in the same time period,” said the MEA statement.
Both countries are also discussing making use of UPI as a payment platform for remittances from the 3.5 million-strong Indian community in the UAE.
Amid the Russia-Ukraine war leading to the food and energy crisis, both the ministers also exchanged views on the global situation and various regional hotspots, as well as the cooperation between the two countries in the UN Security Council.
The statement further added, “Both sides have also taken forward their discussions on other areas of cooperation including energy, healthcare, defence, space, climate change, skills, fin-tech and startups.”
The UAE is a strategic partner of India, wherein both attach great importance to their relations. In the last 8 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited the Arab nation four times. Even the foreign ministers have met four times in the last three months.
The UAE signed its first-ever Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) agreement with India in February this year. It was the first for India in the last 10 years.
