India@FDI Magazine

Above: Prime Minister Narendra Modi
and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed
bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi
Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme
Commander of the UAE Armed Forces
double it to $10 billion in about two to
three years.
Catering to needs of NRIs
Federal Bank, a top private sector
bank from Kerala also plans to set up
a branch at the DIFC. According to
Ganesh Sankaran, executive director,
the bank got permission from the RBI
last November for setting up its first
overseas branch in Dubai. The bank
already has two representative offices
in the UAE – in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The bank caters to the needs of
hundreds of thousands of NRIs from
Kerala, who are based in the Gulf and
repatriate funds home every month. The
bank claims that NRIs have proven to
be the backbone of its business model.
Time-tested
friendship
When His Highness Sheikh
Mohammed bin Zayed Al
Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
and Deputy Supreme Commander of
the UAE Armed Forces, was in India as the
chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations
on January 26, he was apprised by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi of progress on a range of
key initiatives including ‘Start
Up India,’ ‘Make in India,’ ‘Smart City,’ ‘Digital
India’ and ‘Clean India.’
The two leaders also reviewed the progress
in realising the $75 billion target for
UAE investments in India’s plans for
rapid expansion of next generation
infrastructure development.
Mr Modi invited UAE’s participation
in India’s National Infrastructure
Investment Master Fund as an anchor
investor. The UAE reaffirmed its interest
in investing in infrastructure development in
India, especially in priority areas such as energy,
power generation and transmission, defence production, industrial corridors
and parks, railways, roads, ports, shipping and logistics.
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