MENA News: UAE’s non-oil exports increased by 17% in 2022
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the UAE’s prime minister and the ruler of Dubai, tweeted on Monday that the United Arab Emirates’ foreign commerce reached 2.2 trillion dirhams ($599 billion) in 2022, an increase of 17% from the previous year.
The Gulf state has made investments in the transportation and logistics sector. It has also increased its economic alliances to be a hub for international trade.
According to the ministry of economy, non-oil exports increased 6% from the previous year to 366 billion dirhams in 2022 (but were up 52% from 2019). Meanwhile, imports increased 22% to 1.25 trillion dirhams. Re-exports increased by 21% from 2021.
Next, the conclusion of a comprehensive free trade deal last year, the nation hopes to grow bilateral non-oil trade with India to $100 billion in the following five years. China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are among its other important trading partners.
The quickest rate of growth among its top ten export destinations in 2022 was the 40% increase in trade with Turkey. Free trade talks between the UAE and Turkey were opened last year, and they should finish in the first quarter.
Thani Al-Zeyoudi, the UAE Minister for Foreign Trade, told Reuters in a briefing on Sunday that UAE exports to Turkey increased by 109% in 2022 to over 20.7 billion dirhams. He added that imports from Turkey increased by 15% to 40.3 billion dirhams.
The sixth-largest trading partner of the UAE, according to him, is Turkey. Additionally, trade agreements with Georgia and Cambodia are anticipated to be completed in the first quarter. The first quarter of 2019 is when negotiations on a trade deal with Ukraine are scheduled to begin.
Dollar’s upward trend pauses
Speculators increased their projections of how high the U.S. Fed would need to raise interest rates in order to contain inflation. Hence, the dollar weakened on Tuesday following its rise the day before, although it was still trading close to a one-month high.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) increased interest rates, which caused the Australian dollar to rise. It increased by as much as 1% to an intraday high of $0.6952 and last traded at $0.6932.
The RBA is hurting any ideas of easing later this year or early next year by indicating that, in its opinion, inflation will remain high for a protracted period.
Longer-term bond rates and near-term rate expectations will rise as a result. It will also strengthen the AUD (Australian dollar). The Fed’s rate-hiking cycle was expected to come to an end soon, so the data caught traders off guard and gave the dollar a boost, though it gave back some of those gains in Tuesday’s Asian trading.
