India and the UAE have begun Rupee-Dirham direct trade in local currencies, and the two sides plan to expand bilateral trade to $100 billion under their free trade pact, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said Wednesday.
“The kind of expansion we’re seeing in India-UAE partnership be it food security or education…We have an agreement to Promote Rupay cards…and have an agreement between UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and their counterpart in UAE,” Goyal said the India-UAE Business Summit as part of the 10th edition of Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024 being held in Gandhinagar.
He said that there is significant traction in the idea to connect India and Europe through the Middle East through the India-Middle East- Europe corridor and that both countries are expanding partnership new areas such as the startup bridge and the Bharat Bazar which DP World is developing in the UAE.
“In first year of the CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement), we have increased our trade. This is only the beginning,” Goyal said, and assured the UAE of making the upcoming ministerial conference (MC13) of the World Trade Organization a “grand success”. MC13 will be held in the UAE on February 26-29.
Emphasising that the two sides have political stability, business friendly polices, transparency in governance and large skilled manpower pool, Goyal said: “India’s large market also gives opportunities to the UAE to invest more into the economy and deploy large amounts of petrodollars.”
Earlier in the day, he said that PM Gati Shakti will become a planning tool for the entire world in the years to come.
“In the past, it was considered normal in India if an infrastructure project got delayed by 8-12 years and its cost went up…As a nation, chalta hai (casual attitude) was our approach,” he said, adding that a project that gets delayed is the worst form of corruption.