The UAE is a key market for Britain's expanding trade ambitions, as the UK aims to double the number of businesses exporting goods and services across the globe and to cement a trade deal with the wider GCC region. The British Chamber of Commerce is backing the UK government's plan to export £1 trillion worth of goods and services a year by 2030, a significant increase on the £600bn worth exported in 2020 – with the Emirates and wider GCC region a vital part of that target. The British Chambers of Commerce, a trade body representing 53 accredited chambers in the UK and 76 overseas, including the British Business Groups in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, is this week touring important sites in the Emirates before the World Chambers Congress in Dubai, which starts on Tuesday. Boosting trade flow between the UK and UAE is “a huge part of the reason for going to spend time with our business groups” in the Emirates, Shevaun Haviland, director general of the BCC, told The National. “Trade has taken a bit of a battering over the past few years for us with Brexit and of course Covid, and we want to ensure that our international markets know the UK is open for business and that we're really positive around trade,” said Ms Haviland. “We also want to think about how we can ensure that trade is grown in green areas too, so what agreements on sustainable goods and services we can develop between the UK and Emirates to make sure that crucial area is growing too.”
On Monday, International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan set out how the UK plans to chart a new course “now that we are once again a truly independent trading nation, and use our newfound freedom to once again become global champions of free and fair trade”. Britain's 2022 approach will see it target countries and blocs worth £140 billion in bilateral trade last year, including the UAE, with plans to boost opportunities via future deals. The UK will “forge stronger trading relationships with like-minded countries to liberalise trade and open market, put rocket boosters under our exports, and break down the barriers to market access”, Ms Trevelyan said in a speech at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Trade, hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies. “So far we have agreed trade deals with 70 countries plus the EU – trade worth a whopping £766 billion every year,” she said. The UK was now “working flat out to forge ambitious deals with like-minded and strategic partners around the world”. “We are in negotiations to accede to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the world’s largest free trade areas, composed of 11 Pacific nations with dynamic economies from Chile to Malaysia, Vietnam to Peru, boasting a combined GDP of more than £8tn in 2020," Ms Trevelyan said. “And we have launched our consultation with a view to commencing negotiations with the Gulf Co-operation Council states in the months ahead,” she said.