Bilateral CEPA for Trade and Investment Opens up UAE to ASEAN and Malaysia to Middle East & North African Markets
Malaysia has signed a CEPA for trade and investment with the UAE. It is the country’s 17th Free Trade Agreement and the first with a Gulf Cooperation Council member state. Respective delegations for the signing was led by Malaysia’s Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Tengku Zafrul Aziz and Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, witnessed by Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim and UAE’s President, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The agreement’s goals include quicker trade processes, tariff reduction or removal on various products, and improved market access for service exports. The agreement aims to increase commerce and businesses, develop supply chains, and generate investment prospects through improved cooperation and private-sector interaction between the two nations.
The agreement will also open up opportunities for Malaysian businesses to enter the Middle East and North African markets. Similarly, it will make more UAE businesses and investors interested in ASEAN’s trade opportunities.
Boosting Malaysia-UAE Trade: Expanding Non-Oil Trade and Regional Ties
As Southeast Asia’s fourth-largest economy, Malaysia is one of the UAE’s principal trading partners within the ASEAN region. Besides oil-trading, 2023 recorded a $4.9 billion worth of non-oil two-way trading. The following year, during the first nine months of 2024, it recorded $4 billion worth of trade value of non-oil bilateral trade. Though Malaysia trades with Arab nations, the UAE is Malaysia’s second-largest trade partner.
The Malaysia-UAE CEPA for trade and investment is foundational to its ambition to elevate non-oil foreign trade to AED4 trillion ($1.1 trillion) by 2031 while simultaneously nurturing international collaboration with key markets like the ASEAN bloc, which features a GDP exceeding $2.9 trillion and a demographic of 647 million individuals.
