Trade relations between the UAE and India are undergoing a positive change from the impetus of high level exchanges between the two countries since 2015, said a report.

This is the conclusion of Dr Kinnarry Thakkar, professor and head of the Department of Commerce at the University of Mumbai, in an academic paper titled, ‘Empirical Investigation on Bilateral Trade between India and the UAE’, reported state news agency Wam.

The paper has been prepared for a conference on India and the Gulf that has been organised by the University of Mumbai.

In the paper, Dr Thakkar said: “The need to strategise and integrate social and cultural ties shall add a feather in the cap and open new vistas of bilateral trade.

“The UAE has displayed a significant rise in the export of its goods and at the same time exploring new areas of socio-economic ties with India. Amongst all, the UAE emerges to be the most dominant to have trade relations with India,” she added.

In another academic paper prepared for the conference, Saima Farhat, research scholar in the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University, has concluded that the UAE is one of the biggest re-exporters of Indian rice.

In one recent year, she said the UAE accounted for 90 per cent of the world’s re-export of rice.

She credited the Founding Father of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan for the “evolution and development of the country’s agriculture sector and for making it an important economic activity.”