“The U.A.E. is keen to accelerate our industrial development by strengthening existing sectors while also stimulating the growth of emerging high-growth industries” said His Excellency Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, U.A.E. Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, Group CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and U.A.E. Special Envoy for Climate Change U.A.E. during the U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council virtual Board of Directors Meeting on December 7th 2020. A video of H.E. Al Jaber’s remarks can be found here.

H.E. Al Jaber stated the U.A.E. aims to do that by “reinforcing and ensuring our resilience and improving our competitiveness” and also noted one of the main goals of the recently created Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology is to “enhance sustainable economic growth” by increasing in country value and high-skilled employment opportunities for Emirati youth.

The Minister stated that to achieve such goals, the U.A.E. is focused on the three main key enablers, which are:

• Connecting existing industrial sectors such as energy, petrochemicals, and manufacturing to create self-sustaining ecosystems that will help establish new businesses and nurture a new culture around SME’s.
• Leveraging technology to enhance new, high-value sectors, such as health, agriculture, pharma, biotech, and life sciences.
• Optimizing the regulatory framework to enable the U.A.E. to attract best-in-class international partners.

In a wide-ranging discussion, His Excellency also highlighted ADNOC’s recent efforts focusing on efficiency, resilience, value creation, and “ensuring that ADNOC will always be fit for the future”. He noted the organization has “expanded our partnership base beyond traditional oil & gas companies” including with American private equity companies such as Apollo, BlackRock, and KKR. As a result of their efforts ADNOC is “in a much better position to seize market opportunities and to allow for new partnerships to be created with such sophisticated new institutions”. H.E. Al Jaber also stressed the importance of effective internal communication for managing organizational change among employees, teams, and leadership.

In discussing his recent new assignment as the U.A.E. Special Envoy for Climate Change, he noted he is honored and humbled to have this opportunity to serve given the importance of the issue of climate change on the global agenda. Moreover, His Excellency underscored that “the U.A.E. has been at the forefront of confronting climate change for many years and has leveraged its energy expertise to promote real, true, practical solutions” on this issue. He noted the importance of working with the U.S. on climate change at COP 26. His Excellency also pointed out that the U.A.E. was “one of the first to develop and invest in carbon capture technology.” Equally important, the U.A.E. is also investing in hydrogen technologies for the future.

This private conversation was attended by U.S. Ambassador to the U.A.E. John Rakolta, Jr. and U.A.E. Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba as well as senior executives from member companies of the Business Council’s Board of Directors.

For more information about the U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council’s work in the manufacturing sector, please see here or contact the Business Council’s Head of Communications, Mary Zuccarello, at mzuccarello@usuaebusiness.or