India, China dominate exports to UAE.

India and China have ousted long-standing Western suppliers of goods to the UAE to become the dominant exporters to the lucrative market, accounting for nearly a quarter of the country’s total imports, official data showed on Monday.

Iran has also remained the largest market for the UAE’s re-exports, mostly from Dubai, receiving around a-fifth of the country’s total non-oil re-exports, showed the figures by the National Bureau of Statistics of the Ministry of Economy.

India, which maintains strong long-standing political and economic links with the Emirates, exported a record high Dh61.5 billion worth of goods to the UAE in 2009, accounting for around 13.7 per cent of the country’s total imports.

China’s exports to the UAE stood at Dh47.8bn last year, constituting around 10.7 per cent of the country’s total imports of Dh447.3bn.

Taken together, exports by India and China to the UAE totaled around Dh109.3 billion in 2009, accounting for nearly 24.5 per cent of the country’s total imports.

Both countries had been small exporters to the UAE compared with such major industrial powers as Japan, the United States, and the European Union during 1990s before they overtook them and became the top exporters to the country, the second largest Arab economy and one of the top 20 global importers.

The surge was a result of an aggressive marketing blitz by India and China, the competitive price of their products, proximity to the region, their strong political relationship and persistent volatility in the bill of imports from key Western economies because of the peg between Gulf currencies and the US dollar.

The figures showed the US, which had maintained the second position in exports to the UAE in most previous years, retreated to the third rank, with the value of its exports to the country totaling around Dh41.5bn last year.

Germany came fourth, with a round Dh29.9bn while Japan, which had long dominated exports to the UAE, fell back to the fifth position, with a value of about Dh26.9bn, according to the report.

The other key exporters to the UAE were Britain, with Dh18.7bn, Italy with Dh17.4bn, South Korea with Dh16.8bn and France with Dh14bn.  

 Neighbouring Saudi Arabia was the only Arab nation to be in the list of the top 10 exporters to the UAE, with a value of Dh12.1bn.

Turning to re-exports, the report showed Iran remained the largest market for re-exported products from the UAE, with a value of around Dh25.9bn in 2009, accounting for round 17.6 per cent of the UAE’s total re-exports of Dh147bn.

It was followed by India with nearly Dh24.6bn.

Conflict-battered Iraq emerged as the third largest market, receiving around Dh14.3bn worth of re-exported products from the UAE.

Other main markets were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Switzerland, Bahrain and Afghanistan.

According to the Cairo-based Arab League, the UAE became the largest trading hub in the region in 2009 after overtaking Saudi Arabia. Dubai, the country’s business capital, has also maintained its position as the Middle East’s transshipment centre, handling over a fifth of the Gulf non-oil trade.

Lower oil prides and production sharply depressed the UAE’s trade surplus in 2009 despite a fall in imports due to the economic downturn.

From a peak of around Dh233bn in 2008, the surplus in the country’s trade balance dived to about Dh94.6bn, a decline of nearly 59.3 per cent, according to the Abu Dhabi-based Arab Monetary Fund (AMF).

Source : business24-7.ae