Investment

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is intending to establish a new trade bloc, a strategic and interconnected initiative aimed at achieving multiple goals on both the national and the international level. This trade block should not be interpreted in isolation, rather as part of the UAE’s wider economic and geopolitical strategy, which reflects the changing and evolving dynamics of the global trade landscape.     In a fragmented globalization era, where competition and integration attempt significantly increase between the regional trade networks and the multilateral systems, the UAE is poised to maintain its influence and relevance by positioning itself at the forefront of the global landscape. This approach will benefit the UAE on different levels, including advancing domestic priorities while simultaneously enhancing its leverage within the evolving global economic power. Nevertheless, the bloc’s success is not completely guaranteed, as it will need to navigate significant regulatory, infrastructural, and political barriers to translate its potentiality into tangible outcomes.

Growing climate risks in the MENA region pose a number of threats to the investment environment, which could jeopardise both current and future economic plans. While the progress that countries in the region have made by establishing climate action strategies and confirming their commitment to the green transition has signalled to investors that there is a market for mitigation and adaptation technologies, the impact of climate change may be moving at a faster pace. Forecasts show that temperatures in the region have been increasing at double the rate of the global average and that by 2050 they may increase by 4 degrees; potentially making many cities uninhabitable. In the next few years, it is likely that MENA countries will be faced with the challenge of simultaneously managing the impact of extreme weather conditions alongside the risks accompanying the transition towards emission reductions and sustainability policies. Are the region’s economies ready to navigate the impact that climate risks could have on investments and growth? And what could this mean for investments needed to support the growth of new technologies for the green transition?

A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund comprised of money generated by the government, often derived from a country's surplus reserves. Over the last decade, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have sharply grown; this is particularly the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) SWFs who have invested worldwide with a special focus on developed countries, and whose accumulated assets have dramatically increased in the last ten years due to several factors. Therefore, it is necessary to study the characteristics of GCC SWFs, as well as to assess the factors behind their growing role and their future trends.

China believes that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that Taiwan is part of its territory and routinely threatens to invade it to prevent Taiwan's formal independence. On Saturday 18th of February 2023, China's top diplomat Wang Yi said, at the Munich International Security Conference: "Taiwan has never been an independent country, nor will it be an independent country in the future. This is the status quo of the Taiwan issue”. As greater and more aggressive Chinese military exercises outside Taiwan become the norm, there are rising concerns of a full-blown cross-strait crisis with severe military and far-reaching economic repercussions for the global and Chinese economy. A China-Taiwan conflict will have a worse effect than the Russia-Ukraine war given the economic and industrial power that the two countries possess.