UAE-India Bilateral Trade Set To Enjoy Exponential Growth:

Trade relations between the UAE and India are undergoing a positive change from the impetus of high level exchanges between the two countries since 2015.

This is the conclusion of Dr. Kinnarry Thakkar, Professor and Head of the Department of Commerce at the University of Mumbai in an academic paper titled "Empirical Investigation on Bilateral Trade between India and the UAE."

The paper has been prepared for a conference on India and the Gulf that has been organized by the University of Mumbai. "The need to strategise and integrate social and cultural ties shall add a feather in the cap and open new vistas of bilateral trade," Dr. Thakkar argues in her academic paper.

"The UAE has displayed a significant rise in the export of its goods and at the same time exploring new areas of socio-economic ties with India. Amongst all, the UAE emerges to be the most dominant to have trade relations with India," she writes.

In another academic paper prepared for the conference, Saima Farhat, Research Scholar in the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University has concluded that the UAE is one of the biggest re-exporters of Indian rice. In one recent year, she said the UAE accounted for 90 per cent of the world’s re-export of rice.

She credited the Founding Father of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan for the "evolution and development of the country’s agriculture sector and for making it an important economic activity." As a result, the UAE has become the second most food secured region in the world, she argued with data from international sources.

Dr. Maheep, Academic Associate at the School of Social Sciences at the Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi, titled his paper "India-UAE Relations: Joined Hands and Shared Dreams."

He wrote: "Over the last four and a half decades, India has figured out that her relationships with the UAE do not rest on business and trade alone. There are many common factors that naturally bind the two countries together – from their recognition of the need to develop sustainable energy to their rejection of any link between religion and terrorism, their mutual respect for the principles of national sovereignty, social security of Indian expatriates and their focus on knowledge economy."

He reasoned that "based on these shared values and objectives, the two countries now have a solid foundation to take their relationship to new heights."

Other papers prepared for the conference include one on India and the UAE making common cause against terrorism and radicalization by Rajkumar Verma, Research Scholar at the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai.

One paper focused specifically on trade relations between the UAE and India under the Narendra Modi government and was co-authored by two academics from Osmania University, Hyderabad, Dr. Ravi Kumar and Dr. Ramakrishna Bandaru.