Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the government authority on trade, has signed three significant commodity partnerships with China during the Dubai Week in China, a major event that aims to boost bilateral ties.

It announced the first yuan-denominated gold future product to be offered outside of China, obtaining a license from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) to list Shanghai Gold Futures in Dubai using the Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price.

It also announced that Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) has become the first market maker for the Shanghai Gold Futures contract to be listed on the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX).

DMCC signed an agreement with Mega Capital Halal (MCH), a Hong Kong-based holding company, to import coffee annually from China’s Yunnan State Farms Group to Dubai for world distribution. The agreement will see MCH export up to 140,000 tonnes of Chinese Arabica beans from the Yunnan State Farms Group to Dubai, UAE.

Gautam Sashittal, chief executive officer at DMCC, said: “The DMCC partnership agreements we announced at Dubai Week in China, Shanghai, today, is evidence of the deep links between China and Dubai, and the growing role the Dubai trade has in bringing our world’s closer. China is Dubai’s number one trading partner.”

“The relationships that we have cemented here with the Shanghai Gold Exchange, Agricultural Bank of China, Mega Capital and Yunnan State Farms Group will further underpin the role that DMCC is playing in boosting the commodities trade along the West to East corridor – connecting directly into China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” he added.

DMCC will also develop a Coffee Centre. Based on the highly successful DMCC Tea Centre, which has enabled the UAE to become the largest re-exporter of tea in the world, the DMCC Coffee Centre will offer storage and warehousing facilities, offices and co-location space within a 4,500-sq-m temperature controlled facility.

DMCC also launched the latest in a series of reports on ‘The Future of Trade’, hosting a roundtable of experts to discuss the ways that trade is changing the world. The report focus heavily on the potential for digitalisation to impact trade, stating that as many as 350 million businesses would begin exporting goods for the first time if they were to adopt an end-to-end digital strategy.

There was also considerable interest in DMCC’s Free Zone, named the Global Free Zone of the Year 2016 by The Financial Times fDi Magazine for the second year running, and its Business Panel debate ‘Making Business Happen in Dubai. Together’. – TradeArabia News Service