DELHI — Laila Al-Uthman points to a display at an apparel store here and in broken Hindi asks for the t-shirt. Turning to her friend, Jameela, she rattles off the list of prices in her native Arabic.
Laila and her husband, Hamed, who are from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are regular visitors to Delhi and Mumbai. Hamed is a travel operator looking to increase his presence in India and lure more Indians to the UAE amid increasing affluence in India.
“We’ve been coming to the country [India] at least two or three times a year for the past five years,” she told The Media Line. “For me it is travel, but for my husband, it is business.”
It is no longer uncommon in India’s biggest cities and tourist destinations to see black-clad Arab women in shops, haggling with the locals over 50 rupees ($1). But they are just one aspect of burgeoning commercial ties between India and the federation of Gulf emirates that runs the gamut from merchandise trade, tourism, investment and labor exports.
Indeed, for the UAE, it is India rather than China that is the preeminent economic partner. In 2011, two-way trade between India and Dubai – the emirate that acts as the confederation’s entrepot, reached 206 billion dirhams ($56 billion), more than double China’s 100 billion dirhams. India accounted for nearly a fifth of Dubai’s total, according to Dubai customs.
Over 1.75 million Indians live in the UAE, making it the confederation’s largest expatriate community. The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has 20,038 Indian companies registered. UAE investors have pumped some $2 billion into India in areas ranging from energy, computer services and programming to construction and tourism, making the tiny confederation the 10th-largest foreign investor in India.
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