His Excellency Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, led an Emirati delegation of business, investment, and development leaders, including HE Rashid Abdul Karim Al Balooshi, Undersecretary of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED), and His Excellency Mansour Abdul Allah Khalfan Belhoul, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United Kingdom, to discuss renewable energy projects and other potential areas of cooperation, such as science.
His Excellency Dr. Al-Zeyoudi held a bilateral meeting in Edinburgh with His Excellency Angus Robertson, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, in order to review the course of relations between the two countries, during which the importance of the partnership between the UAE and Scotland was emphasized, and the common vision of the two sides in enhancing cooperation to develop opportunities for the future economy based on knowledge and advanced technology and innovation solutions.
His Excellency Al-Zeyoudi also met His Excellency Evan Mackey, Secretary of State for Business, Trade, Tourism and Projects in the Scottish Government. Discussions focused on the growing trade and investment relationship between the UAE and Scotland, particularly in relation to food and agricultural products and energy projects, and the opportunity to develop key sectors such as tourism.
The delegation visited the Scottish Enterprise Agency, which presented its efforts to transform Scotland’s economy through innovation and investment.
The delegation held a meeting at Scottish Development International where the agency’s CEO, Robin Aitken, presented the potential for hydrogen production in Scotland and its rapidly developing space sector.
The Emirati delegation was also briefed on a number of industrial success stories in Scotland, including Storegga, which specializes in carbon capture, removal and storage, and XLCC, a company that makes deep sea cables. The visit also included a tour of FinTech Scotland and Heriot-Watt University’s Industrial Decarbonization Innovation and Research Centre.
During the visit, His Excellency Al-Zeyoudi and the accompanying delegation held roundtables with a range of senior government and private business sector officials in Scotland, focusing on axes related to renewable energy, infrastructure, trade and the creation of pioneering companies and projects, in the presence of elite executives from a number of large local companies and government agencies concerned, investment and trade.
Referring to the aspects of complementarity between the economies of the UAE and Scotland, His Excellency Al-Zeyoudi expressed his belief that there is broad scope for improving cooperation in priority sectors and said that the UAE’s partnership with Scotland have promising growth prospects. and we seek to enhance the common denominators in both sides’ vision to help advance economic and trade cooperation – to new levels, in addition to a focus on advanced technology, space exploration and the possibilities of carbon neutrality. The UAE is already working on major projects in Scotland through renewable energy company Masdar, such as: B. the offshore wind farm Haywind, and we see plenty of scope to develop other projects with a similar impact.
The UK as a whole is one of the UAE’s top trading partners as the volume of bilateral non-oil trade between the two parties reached US$7.4 billion in the first nine months of 2022, a 32% increase compared to the UAE corresponds to the same period in 2021 and also grew by 22.3% and by 4.4% in the same period in 2020 and 2019 respectively.
During this visit, the UAE delegation included His Excellency Sharif Habib Al-Awadi, Director General of Fujairah Free Zone Authority and Muhammad Gharib Al-Hosani, CEO, the experience and satisfaction of Kizad Group’s customers and Hussein Al- Meer, General Manager of the Masdar Company in the UK, and Engineer Sultan Hassan Al-Ghafili, Director of Technical Projects at the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation for Humanitarian Works.