DIFC outlines investment opportunities during Shanghai visit

Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), a global commercial hub connecting businesses and financial institutions with emerging markets opportunities across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA), has pledged to support China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) development initiative in realizing its own growth objectives over the next decade.
DIFC’s leadership team is visiting Beijing and Shanghai this week to announce the center’s expansion plans, which will see it triple in size by 2024. China is the first country outside the UAE to have been chosen for a formal unveiling of the strategy.
Speaking to journalists in Beijing Saturday, DIFC Gov. Essa Kazim said the center’s position at the heart of MEASA, a vast economic region with an estimated combined GDP of $7.9 trillion, would help China catalyze the OBOR trade and investment initiative.
“China is a strategic partner of the UAE and, today, it’s most important source of imports,” said Kazim. “Boasting an internationally recognized legal and regulatory framework and a dynamic cluster of financial and non-financial businesses, DIFC is ideally placed to promote trade and investment between China and the emerging markets of MEASA, helping the country look beyond its borders to secure fresh economic opportunities.”
DIFC’s 10-year strategy targets an increase in assets under management from $10.4 billion to $250 billion, balance sheet growth from $65 billion to $400 billion, and a financial company portfolio of 1,000 firms, up from 382 in June 2015. The total work force employed within the center is also expected to rise from 18,521 to 50,000.
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, VP and PM of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, emphasized the UAE’s readiness to work with China in achieving the goals of the OBOR initiative at a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wangi Yi in February this year.