India-UAE to work on IME Economic Corridor protocols in May
Close allies India and UAE have begun working on the first stage of the Middle-East trade corridor with protocols allowing consignments fastest clearance.
New Delhi: Notwithstanding the war in Gaza and its fall-out in Middle-East, India and United Arab Emirates (UAE) have begun work on the first stage of the pathbreaking India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) with the first senior official meeting expected to take place by May 15.
PM Narendra Modi being received by UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Abu Dhabi airport. (File photo)
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The IMEEC links India, UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel with Europe and US through trade and merchandise exports with ports in Europe being the final destination. The IMEEC has full support of the Biden administration and is designed to integrate the markets of these countries.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed the inter-governmental framework agreement on the IMEEC with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on February 14, the two countries have decided to hold the first round of meetings next month to firmly establish the protocols for the first stage of IMEEC. The IMEEC will not only link India with Europe via the Middle-East but also increase the bilateral trade with UAE, which is currently pegged at USD 85 billion and growing by the day.
It is understood that during the Joint Secretary level meeting with representatives from trade, shipping and commerce ministries the two sides will establish protocols or what has been called virtual trade corridors so that goods containers once cleared at Indian port of Mundra are not reopened at either UAE’s Fujairah port and allowed to proceeds to the final destinations in Europe or America. The meeting which was scheduled for April 25 in UAE had to be postponed due to prior commitments on both sides.
Even though Saudi Arabia is stuck in Middle-East politics due to Israel on Gaza post October 7 terrorist attack, India and UAE are getting their act together on IMEEC so that the trade corridor between Bharat and Gulf is complete. The IMEEC involves taking the containers via Jordan and Saudi Arabia on railroad to Haifa port in Israel and thereon to southern ports in Europe like Naples and Marseilles.
The IMEEC will be discussed when US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pays a visit to India for the iCET meeting with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval later this month. The corridor was conceived by PM Modi and President MBZ with US, Saudi Arabia joining the close ally grouping to add heft.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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