Abu Dhabi Ports signs $300m investment agreement with China

Abu Dhabi Ports has signed an investment cooperation agreement with China’s Jiangsu province to strengthen economic ties and build investment projects.

Initial investments from five companies from Jiangsu will bring $300m to Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Port Free Trade Zone, creating more than 1,400 jobs.

Under the agreement, China-UAE Industrial Capacity Cooperation Construction Management, a UAE company newly established by the Jiangsu Provincial Overseas Cooperation and Investment Company Limited (JOCIC), will occupy and develop approximately 23.7m square feet of the free trade zone for companies from the Chinese province of Jiangsu. This represents 2.2% of the available free zone space in KIZAD’s newly allotted Khalifa Port Free Trade Zone (KPFTZ) area.

China is the UAE’s second largest trading partner and the biggest exporter to the UAE. The UAE is considered a gateway to about 60% of China’s exports to regional markets at an annual volume of exchange of $70bn. Trade and economic relationships between the two companies are strengthening as part of the ‘Belt and Road’ and ‘Maritime Silk Road’ initiatives.

“Jiangsu and Abu Dhabi are highly complementary to each other in terms of natural endowment, economic structure and industrial systems, bearing the common wishes to speed up industrial structural adjustment and promote economic transformation and upgrading. It is good timing for us to jointly deepen industrial capacity cooperation and promote the ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative, and we will have a broad prospect in this undertaking. We will work together with Abu Dhabi to build the UAE-China Industrial Capacity Cooperation Demonstration Zone into a landmark program of the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative and a beacon of UAE-China exchanges and cooperation,” said Huang Lixin, Vice Governor of Jiangsu.