UAE’s Trade Hits New Record in First Half of 2024

This, in fact, is the all-time high for the UAE’s non-oil trade. That goes a long way to show how well the country is doing and how successful it is in diversifying its economic sectors.

What the Numbers Say

Thani Al Zeyoudi, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, had every reason to feel quite optimistic. He stated that the country continued to surpass records in its trade that excludes oil, adding that it was clear evidence that its economy was increasingly getting better and growing.

Trade in the country touched 1.395 trillion dirhams as far as the first six months of 2024. This is a record figure witnessed first time ever, and sixth growth for a six-month listing.

Year to Year, Comparison

That is 11.2% over the corresponding figure for the first half of 2023 and indicates that a new UAE plan to diversify the various components of its economy has gone quite well.

Exports Are Growing Too

At the same time, the UAE is exporting more in all aspects, except oil, to other countries. Sales without oil have increased by 25% compared to the first half of 2023 and reached 256.4 billion dirhams.

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What Are They Selling?

In fact, the country sells more gold and silver, jewelry, oils, and perfumes, along with aluminum products, copper wires, and iron products.

This shows that UAE will be able to compete well with the rest of the countries in selling these items.

Special Agreements Help Trade

There have been special agreements done by UAE with some countries, which can make trading easy. These are known as Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPA).

Dr. Al Zeyoudi put it that these agreements are helping a lot. Trade with India and Turkey, two countries having these agreements, was up 15% and 9.8%, respectively. In total, the two now constitute 11.7% of all the UAE’s trade.

Plans for the Future

The UAE wants to make more and more agreements like this—hoping it would help them reach the big goal of Dhs 4 trillion in trade, except for oil, by 2031.

Dr. Al Zeyoudi said they would keep using trade to drive the growth in the UAE economy and perform well over the years.