Ducab India, part of the Ducab Group, one of the biggest end-to-end energy solutions providers and manufacturing firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has signed its first bilateral partnership with Emirates NBD India. Through the partnership, the Ducab Group is looking at a continued expansion of its wires, cables and metal solutions in India. The Group opened its office in Bengaluru last year making it Ducab’s first office in India and southeast Asia. The first transaction under the new bilateral partnership has already been completed.
Through the partnership, Emirates NBD will be supporting working capital and capex expansion plans of Ducab in India. It will assist Ducab in financing local projects through its strong project financing experience in multiple dimensions. It will also assist in Risk Management by leveraging the LCS (Local Currency Settlement) Mechanism which will be promoted through the bilateral trade and investment between Ducab India and UAE.
His Excellency Abdulnasser Jamal Alshaali, UAE Ambassador to the Republic of India said: “The UAE and India have long shared robust bilateral trade ties, which have received a significant added boost in recent years with the UAE’s push to expand its global network and diversify its economy, where ‘Expanding the UAE’s International Economic Partnerships’ was strongly promoted as one of the five top government priorities for 2023. Ducab’s growing operations in India, and particularly this new partnership agreement with Emirates NBD – another ‘National Champion’ company in the UAE – unmistakably underlines the key role that the Group, and national companies in general, play in accomplishing the UAE’s strategic national and global objectives.”
Mohammad Almutawa, Group CEO at Ducab, noted, “This new bilateral partnership that we have signed with Emirates NBD India is an extension of our existing robust partnership with Emirates NBD Group, which has enabled both entities to grow together across various markets. It also builds on our recent tremendous progress in the Indian market, underpinned by our newly opened office in Bengaluru, which was planned to further strengthen our operations and presence in the region, and establish Ducab as a leading global provider of high-quality integrated energy solutions.”
Meanwhile, Meshal Al Naqbi, Group CFO at Ducab, said: “Ducab has long had strong relations with leading Indian industries. The group imports 25% of its materials from India and serves more than 100 clients in the country, providing 263,000 metric tons of copper equivalent, comparable to powering 3 million houses, in addition to employing more than 1,000 Indian nationals.”
For his part, Sharad Agarwal, CEO at Emirates NBD India, said, “This new partnership with the Ducab Group builds on the momentum of the trade agreement that the UAE and India signed last year, wherein two governments have agreed to increase the bilateral trade to USD 100 billion per annum, and with focus on transportation, logistics and Infrastructure sector in India and bring it in line with international best practices. We have great confidence in Ducab’s integrated solutions in that regard, and in the products, it supplies to various projects, which stand out for meeting the highest quality standards.”
The agreement is in line with the UAE’s strategy to continuously diversify the national economy and increase non-oil trade with international commercial partners. India consistently ranks among the UAE’s largest global trade partners, with India-UAE bilateral trade currently valued at around USD73 billion. The agreement also follows landmark agreements signed between the two countries, most notably, the UAE-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), designed to enable businesses to invest and expand their operations, drive cross-border trade, and build new partnerships, as well as the historic Memorandum of Understanding signed between the UAE and India regarding the Local Currency Settlement (LCS) system, which allows for the use of the Indian Rupee and UAE Dirham in bilateral trade – India’s first arrangement of this kind.