InConversation with Evarist Bartolo, Minister for Foreign and European Affairs, Malta and Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade, UAE
As we try to understand the new world that is being created after the Pandemic, the New World struggling to address the climate crisis and the new world order to emerge. With the war in Ukraine, we find ourselves like Ptolemy 19 centuries ago and the cartographers of 500 years ago trying to map the unknown lands they had not discovered and mapped. When denoting these unknown territories, they used to write “sunt dracones” means here are Dragons, which are the Dragons that we have to face in our post covid world, in a world where we have to change our lifestyle, consumption and production models to tackle the climate crisis and the turbulence as we move from a unipolar to a multipolar world, reflects Evarist Bartolo, Minister for Foreign and European Affairs, Malta, as shares his trepidations of the new world order and the volatile geo-political state of affairs at the ET Global Business Summit 2022.
Minister Bartolo points out that in the post covid world, we are creating new supply and value chains where globalization becomes regionalization as we assure and reassure economic operations and products that had been transferred to faraway lands that were cheaper and more competitive. This adjustment will be painful but will create new opportunities and it does not have to be a zero-sum game where different continents close themselves off to each other and turn their backs on each other.
There are around 40 different conflicts going on in the world at the moment, but the Ukraine war is where a major nuclear power is involved directly, and which is more dangerous for the whole planet. He is of the opinion that we need to find a way to coexist peacefully and forging cooperative security depends on dialogue.
Which Bartolo emphasizes that it is neither desirable nor realistic. Regionalization and globalization can complement each other if they are managed well and through cooperation rather than conflict. The climate crisis has to be managed well as it can turn into a geopolitical crisis if it leads to the collapse of countries whose livelihood is still based on fossil fuels. Renewable energy is phased out before replacing it with new energy, and if countries and citizens are not helped to make the required transition, there will be a backlash if the measures needed to be taken to deal with the climate crisis are seen more risky and threatening than the climate crisis itself, which is ravaging the planet with drought, extreme weather, wildfires flooding, rising sea levels. The Ukraine war, although a restricted war to one country militarily, is having and will have regional and global security, political and economic consequences that will be left long after the war ends.
Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade of the United Arab Emirates speaks of the India UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) signed to increase bilateral merchandise trade to $100 billion by 2030 and its significance. The India-UAE CEPA marks the first trade agreement India has made with a major trading partner in over a decade. The last major FTA India signed was with Japan in 2011. The agreement is the first in a series of FTAs that India is pursuing to boost exports to 1 trillion dollars each in merchandise and services by 2030.
Dr. Thani emphasizes that the agreement is a win-win agreement. It’s going to enhance and expand on the export and imports from both sides. It’s going to have a huge flow of investments for both nations. We have already detailed some of the governments to encourage the companies and the investors, the sovereign wealth funds to get together on certain sectors which are an interest for both nations. And we’re going to work as well capitalize on the existing government systems through the higher Committee on Investments, as well as the foreign based joint committees and supporting expediting the investments and the flow of the investors to India. We know that even the goods that we’re going to export from UAE to India are going to be one of the main raw materials or inputs for many industries. So we know for sure it’s going to create a lot of jobs and create a lot of entrepreneurs, unicorns and the Indian markets. So it’s not only the numbers that we are announcing, the impact and the spill over from the agreement is just beyond the numbers and the economic models which usually see in such agreements.
On energy, Dr Thani elaborates that it is the backbone of any economy around the world. And for us in the UAE, it’s really the one which manages to facilitate the whole economy diversification in the country. With the 10% of a global oil reserve that we have in the country, we do have a longterm vision where we want to ensure that we’re diversifying the economy and we’re moving towards being a real knowledge-based economy. We managed to do a big shift on that. The contribution for oil gas is around 28% so far and we’re going to continue this effort on diversifying the economy. I’m not saying that the oil will not be part of our products, it will be always an integrated part and an important sector, but the diversity is going to be heavily dependent on the brains and the tenants that we’re going to have on the carbon footprint of the sustainability aspect.
Further adding, we’re going to continue investing in green energy as well as the solar projects and it’s going to be assisting the whole diversification agenda of the nations where we’re going to take things to the next level. But we’re also talking about how we’re going to support the SMEs entrepreneurs, how we’re going to support and focus on the industrial zones and how advanced technologies are going to be part of the whole ecosystem and how we’re going to bring even the state of our technologies like AI, blockchains and those advanced and visualizations into the way that we’re running the businesses.
An interesting element he mentioned, was on Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, which Dr. Thani says, are a real interest for us as a nation and those are going to be the futuristic sectors and we have to be ready and start building the government infrastructure to ensure the readiness for those way of running businesses. But also, at the same time we’re seeing trends on soft developments on app applications AI advanced algorithm which we see the talents are migrating to the UAE globally. If we’re talking about the numbers globally, the blockchain market is set to be around 60 trillion industries by 2026, which is only five years from here. And we do recognize that there is a huge potential, and we have to be proactively visiting ourselves as capture markets to those international interested entities, stakeholders to come unopened and agree. So, we’re adopting and implementing the next generation of regulatory system where to ensure that those companies are going to be having the right ecosystem by talking directly to them and we’re approaching them, this issue in very rightfully balanced without harming the way that we’re running the conventional sector that we have either proofed the encouraging renovations, ensuring the compliances are in place and CEPA is an integral part of it.
