Abu Dhabi’s state-backed investment company Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) has signed agreements with two Israeli government agencies to enhance formal relations between the countries.
According to the organization, the cooperation with inward investment agency, Invest in Israel and the Israel Innovation Authority are part of a series of initiatives ADIO is working on to develop private sector opportunities with the country.
The new agreements “will further strengthen the economic dialogue between Israel and the UAE and promote collaboration between the nations”, Mr. Amir Peretz, Israeli minister of economy and industry said.
Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi Director General – ADIO
“In those two partners, we have now covered the full circle with some of the other MoUs we have signed in terms of addressing every part of the Israeli ecosystem that we are interested in attracting to Abu Dhabi. We want the innovators, we want established companies and we want to make sure that we are helping to simplify their experience and their growth in Abu Dhabi and ultimately access the region from here. We’re now seeing the execution and the delivery of all of the interest and all the information gathering that happened over the last six months. So it’s taken people a while – people wanted to touch and feel Abu Dhabi as opposed to me holding a camera up and showing them what it looks like. It’s a very different experience.”
The UAE and Israel have normalized relations last September and trade between the two nations is expected to increase about $4 billion a year, stated Emirate’s Federal Export Credit Company, Etihad Credit Insurance.
Mr. Bin Hendi has commented that one large Israeli conglomerate had already built an Abu Dhabi base. Further, Abu Dhabi entities such as G42 and Mubadala have also been looking to explore the Israeli market.
“We’ve been engaged with some very large Israeli companies on the FinTech side and the financial services side that are looking at ADGM,” Mr. Bin Hendi added.
ADIO’s Tel Aviv base is the first of eight new foreign offices now open across the major cities in the US, Europe, and Asia, supporting a $545 million innovation program providing both financial and non-financial support to high-growth firms in areas, such as healthcare, food, biotech, and aviation.
Another significant area of interest from Israeli investors is plugging into local universities to run programs locally to teach technology courses already established at Israeli higher education institutions.
“You can see it becomes part of the way they integrate not only exposure for students but also the ability of these companies to be able to identify the next batch of talent they want to bring in. This is incredibly helpful with our knowledge transfer and upskilling programs that we are very keen on continuing to develop,” Mr. Bin Hendi concluded.
