UAE Investments in India on the Rise, Says Indian Envoy

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has the largest community of Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in the world, Indian Ambassador Navdeep Singh Suri said. “On the occasion of India’s 69th Republic Day, I want to say that what a privilege to be India’s representative with such a dynamic and diverse Indian community of 3.3 million,” Suri said, citing figures from the 2017 International Migration Report of the International Organization of Migrants (IOM), Gulf News reported.

Suri added that millions of Indians are getting benefited from the partnership between the two countries. “We have seen an upsurge in the UAE investments in India,” he said, adding that prominent NRI-owned companies such as Lulu International, NMC Healthcare, and Aster have already announced huge projects with high investments in India.

Talking about the DP World’s recent announcement about the $3 billion joint-investment fund with India’s National Infrastructure and Investment Fund (NIIF), which will invest in ports, inland waterways, river terminals, freight corridors, cold storage and warehousing, Suri said the projects, once they become functional, will have a “transformational” impact. “These are very crucial for India as transport and logistics costs are very high in the country. Inland waterways are the most cost effective and much cheaper than highways,” he said.

The focus of the Indian government for the last one year has been to ensure that UAE’s investments in India are allotted to commercially viable projects and channels as these investments are not a grant or a loan, he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit the UAE in February. He will be the keynote speaker at the sixth World Government Summit, which will commence on Feb. 11 in Dubai. He is also scheduled to visit Abu Dhabi.

According to The International Migration Report 2107, India, with a 16.6 million-strong diaspora community, is now the country with the largest number of people living outside the country’s borders, followed by Mexico (13 million), the Russian Federation (10.6 million) and China (10 million). “In 2017, 16.6 million persons from India were living in another country compared to 13.0 million for Mexico,” said the report.

It added that migrants from India now reside in several destination countries, including the United Arab Emirates (3 million), and the United States of America and Saudi Arabia, which have 2 million Indians each.