The Scene
An Emirati delegation took over a floor at the St. Regis in midtown Manhattan this week, pitching Western investors on setting up shop in the Gulf nation. It was Abdulla bin Touq al Marri’s third trip to the US since becoming the UAE’s economy minister in 2020 and he said the sell is getting easier. “I used to come and convince. Now everyone understands the UAE, and I don’t need to convince.”
He wouldn’t be drawn on cooling trade with Israel or the Emirates’ economic competition with Saudi Arabia. He stressed the UAE’s growing trade agenda and surprised me with an answer about the AI race.
The View From Abdulla bin Touq al Marri
Liz Hoffman: Has the geopolitical situation in the Middle East changed your pitch, or changed how Western investors are thinking about the region?
Abdulla bin Touq al Marri: When we pitch the UAE, we pitch openness, we pitch stability, we pitch visionary leadership. Stability is a key part, given that we are in the eye of the storm. It has been stable for the last 50 years, and will be stable for the next 200 years.
The whole supply chain globally needs to be redesigned and reeningeered, and the UAE can they play a big role. We are at the center of the world. You wake up at 8am, it’s midday in Japan, and when it’s midday in UAE, it’s 8am in London, and at 5pm it’s early morning here in New York.
The sense in the West is that Gulf money is now coming with strings attached that it didn’t used to have, that you want to see investments in-country and not just financial returns.
Yes. Any investment has to have a return but also money coming back. We have a target to diversify our economy away from oil and gas, and the returns as well of these investments should be equivalent to the returns of oil and gas.
You’re trying to make the Emirates a global home for AI. What’s your advantage?
It’s language. You can access all North Africa, the Arabic speaking countries. So how do you take down the barrier of AI not just focusing on one language? That’s the edge.
