Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI), the UAE government’s export credit company, recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India (ECGC) to explore and boost trade and economic cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and India.
The two agencies will create prospects for mutual strategic projects and offer a platform to identify new business opportunities and develop new partnerships.
The MoU was signed by ECI chief executive officer Massimo Falcioni and M Senthilnathan, chairman-cum-managing director of ECGC.
With accessibility to a range of export credit, financing and investment insurance products, businesses and exporters in both countries stand to gain from this partnership, an official release in the UAE said.
Both institutions will work towards boosting their cooperation and communication in enhancing trade and business relations between the two countries; exploring mutual opportunities for insurance, reinsurance, co-insurance services for export of goods in a third country, investments and services to assist and support insured exporters; facilitating access for small and medium enterprises, mutual exchange of good practices; organizing joint events; and identifying specific solutions in the export insurance field.
The UAE and India have always had a strong non-oil foreign trade relation in the past decade. Data released by the UAE ministry of economy in May 2020 showed the non-oil exports and re-exports between the two nations in 2019 have reached over AED24 billion, and nearly AED30 billion, respectively.
In addition, India’s ministry of external affairs in February 2020 reported that the trade between the two sides is valued at around $60 billion (over AED220.3 billion), making the UAE India’s third-largest trading partner and second-largest export destination in 2018-2019.
Meanwhile, India’s exports to the UAE are well diversified, with the former’s major export items including petroleum products, minerals, textiles and garments, cotton, yarn and engineering and machinery products.