Building bonds on firm foundations

As the United Arab Emirates celebrates its 47th National Day today, we take a look at the growing bilateral ties it shares with Hong Kong.

The country remains one of Hong Kong’s top 15 principal trading partners, according to the government trade and industry department’s latest figures, and its biggest trade partner in the Middle East.

Hong Kong’s trade with the Emirates was valued at HK$57.7 billion, a growth of 8.8 per cent on the year before, according to the Consulate General of the United Arab Emirates.

Reciprocally, Hong Kong was the UAE’s 16th largest merchandise trading partner, a Legislative Council paper said.

In June, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the capital city’s international financial centre, signed a cooperation agreement to jointly promote and support financial services innovation in Hong Kong and the UAE.

Deputy chief executive officer and executive director of Intermediaries of HK-SFC, Julia Leung, and director of international affairs of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM, Philippe Richard, signed the agreement at the annual conference of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions which was held in Budapest.

At the time, Richard said that fintech had been one of the major focal points for both HKSFC and the FSRA, and that both parties saw this as an opportunity to further support the growth and financial development of Abu Dhabi and the Middle East, Africa and the South Asia region.

This framework is said to enable both regulators to work closely to identify and refer appropriate innovative projects and fintech start-ups to ADGM’s

FinTech Regulatory Laboratory and the HK-SFC Fintech Contact Point.

Tech is not the only area of recent cooperation between Hong Kong and the UAE.

In August, Dubai Exports, the export promotion agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED), led a visit to Hong Kong to attract buyers and importers in sourcing products from Dubai and East Asian markets.

The visit also commemorated the first anniversary of the opening in Hong Kong of the Overseas Trade Office of Dubai Exports.

The office’s aim is to strengthen relations with key stakeholders as part of enabling UAE-based companies to expand their international efforts and presence in the East Asian region.

“Dubai Exports has already received enquiries from 71 buyers in Hong Kong interested in sourcing products from Dubai while 17 of our local companies have also sought our assistance in exporting to Hong Kong,” Mohammed Al Kamali, thedeputy chief executive officer of Dubai Exports, said at the time.

According to a HKTDC Research UAE market profile with figures last reviewed in August 2018, Hong Kong’s major export commodities to the UAE in 2017 were nonmetallic mineral manufactures, amounting to about

US$2.5 billion.

This is followed by telecommunications equipment, sound recording and reproducing apparatus that totalled US$2.38 billion, while merchandise exports have fallen about 3.7 per cent compared to the year before.

Major imports consist of nonmetallic mineral manufactures at US$1.82 billion, while merchandise exports have risen 13 per cent.