UAE-Japan trade at Dhs43b in H1

28/08/2016 05:22 AST

The volume of trade exchange between the UAE and Japan stood at Dhs43 billion ($11.8 billion) during the first half of this year, according to Masami Ando, Managing Director of Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO).
The UAE is Japan’s largest trade partner at the GCC level with the value of Japan-GCC trade exchange amounting to Dhs129 billion ($35.2 billion) in the first half of this year, according to the statistics of the Japanese Customs Administration, he said.
In an interview with Al Khaleej, Ando added that the value of Japan’s exports to the UAE stood at Dhs14 billion ($3.8 billion) in the first half of this year as compared with Dhs29 billion ($7.8 billion) in Japan’s imports from the UAE over the same period.
The automobile trade accounted for 56.5 per cent of the value of Japan’s exports to the UAE in 2015, while fuel, mineral gases and oil accounted for 97 per cent of Japan’s imports from the UAE, Ando said. Japan imported more than 308 million barrels of crude oil from the UAE in 2015.
Meanwhile, Japan’s trade deficit with the UAE dropped by 54 per cent to $15 billion in 2015. The volume of the UAE foreign trade with Japan stood at about $15 billion in 2015, accounting for one third of non-oil trade with Japan, it was revealed recently during the 4th the Arab-Japanese Economic Forum in Casablanca.
The UAE’s direct non-oil trade recorded Dhs269.5 billion during the first quarter of 2016, maintaining almost the same figures achieved in Q1 last year, said the Federal Customs Authority (FCA).
FCA said its preliminary statistics show that imports, Dhs166.1 billion, accounted for more than half of the UAE non-oil foreign trade during Q1 this year, while exports recorded Dhs 46.8 billion and exports Dhs56.6 billion in the same period.