His Excellency Dr. Thani Al-Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade, confirmed that the UAE does not intend to return to a state of complete lockdown, emphasizing that the country's focus is on conducting tests and vaccinating the population against the pandemic to keep its economy open. Al-Zeyoudi held an interview with Bloomberg TV in Dubai, addressing various issues, primarily the forecasts for the UAE's economic performance in 2022 and Expo 2020 Dubai.
Dr. Al-Zeyoudi stated: "If we talk about our expectations for the UAE economy in 2022, we are starting the year with very strong forecasts for the country’s economy. As everyone knows, 2021 was very significant, positive, and encouraging for us, where we celebrated the golden jubilee of our nation’s founding and opened Expo 2020 Dubai, through which we show the world that closure cannot continue." He added: "We have returned to normal life; it is about achieving a balance between health and economic requirements to ensure communities quickly return to their normal lives and deal with global challenges."
Regarding regulatory changes, Al-Zeyoudi noted: "We have made significant changes to our legal framework within our economic system to ensure we achieve the goals we announced in the past period. We are talking here about allowing foreigners to fully own their businesses in the country and investors to own shares in our companies, as well as changing the workweek to align with other countries. He emphasized that developing labor laws provides more flexibility and enhances our community's ability to welcome the world. We have shown the world our global practices in sustainability to demonstrate our contributions to the efforts aimed at reducing global carbon emissions to zero by 2050."
He continued: "While we are relying on strong foundations this year, we continue to balance health and economic aspects, and we will continue to increase the number of tests we conduct daily to detect any new infections from the pandemic. We also encourage people to get vaccinated to enhance their ability to cope with the current situation; these are the pillars on which the government bases its rapid actions." On the spread of the "Omicron" variant in the UAE, he stated: "The impact of the 'Omicron' variant is less than that of 'Delta,' during which we did not close the country, and we are naturally working to maintain balance throughout the 'Omicron' outbreak and with any future mutated strains of the pandemic; we will not return to a state of full lockdown."
Regarding the expected impact of the recent change in the official workweek on the country's economic performance, he said: "There are new aspects related to the new workweek; the first aspect is ensuring more availability of rest times for individuals, which includes half a day on Friday and full days on Saturday and Sunday, meaning more activity and consumption during the weekend. We are receiving positive feedback from companies that changed their official working hours, reporting that consumption levels have rebounded during the weekend, as well as throughout the week. Things are going very well, and we expect more purchases and changes in consumer behavior regarding buying times. We are moving forward with these changes to ensure more connectivity between the UAE and global markets and economies, and we will certainly see the results of these changes by the end of the first half of this year, or perhaps in a few months from now."
He added: "We are working on transitioning from a regional hub to a global one, and to achieve that, we must ensure that our systems, laws, and operations are connected to global systems. This was the main reason for our openness to global best practices, and our change in the workweek is no different; it is merely an additional step aimed at ensuring our systems connect with their global counterparts."
Regarding the UAE's performance in attracting foreign direct investment, Dr. Thani Al-Zeyoudi said: "Several economic sectors played key roles in attracting foreign direct investment in 2021. The e-commerce and online shopping sector was one of the decisive sectors in this regard, and the real estate sector also made a strong comeback in 2021, attracting significant foreign investments. Huge investments have flowed to us from the United Kingdom and several European countries, Australia, and Russia, and we are still seeing more investments coming from these countries. Since last September, we have been working on comprehensive partnership agreements with several countries, making significant progress on partnerships with some of them, most notably with India, where the partnership agreement has almost completed its procedures and is expected to be announced soon. We anticipate finalizing the partnership with Indonesia within the next few months and opening the markets between the two countries. Our partnership with India is particularly important for our economy; we are talking about approximately 1.7% of our GDP over the next ten years, and the exports and imports between the two countries will create more jobs. We are very optimistic about the future of our economic relations with most countries worldwide."
