Economic Impact
UAE-Israel Trade Reaches $1.4 Billion This Year So Far, Surpassing All of 2021
August 18, 2022
Bilateral trade between Israel and the United Arab Emirates reached $1.407 billion in the first seven months of 2022, surpassing the $1.221 billion of trade recorded between the two in all of 2021.
The figures, which account for trade of goods excluding software, were shared Thursday by Amir Hayek, Israel’s ambassador to Abu Dhabi. Hayek was appointed to his post nearly a year after Israel and the UAE normalized relations with US support as part of the Abraham Accords in September 2020.
The agreement has since ushered in a flurry of economic cooperation, with Israel and the UAE inking a free trade pact in May, following months of negotiations. It was Israel’s first such trade deal with an Arab country, and is expected to increase annual trade between the two economies to more than $10 billion by 2027.
At the time, the UAE-Israel Business Council predicted that nearly 1,000 Israeli companies would operate in or through the UAE by the end of 2022.
Trade has also skyrocketed between Israel and other Middle Eastern states, according to a report from the Abraham Accords Peace Institute. The institute noted in June that trade with Jordan increased by 54 percent from last year amounting to $55 million, followed by Egypt with a 41-percent increase and $23.6 million. Morocco reached $3.1 million in trade deals with the Jewish state in May, marking a 94-percent increase from 2021. Meanwhile, Israel’s trade with Bahrain went from none to $1.2 million within a year.
The US-brokered Abraham Accords are a joint agreement between Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE to normalize relations signed in September 2020, with Sudan and Morocco later included.