UAE, Greece to advance bilateral ties

The UAE and Greece have discussed ways of advancing bilateral economic relations with special emphasis on innovation, logistics, maritime transport, infrastructure, tourism, agriculture, energy and food investment.

This came at a meeting between Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy, and Georgios Katrougalos, Greece's Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, on the sidelines of the UAE participation in the 2nd Euro-Arab Summit, which closed here today.

The UAE- Greek relations are growingly developing and over the past period and the two countries have exchanged official visits to further upgrade the current cooperation ties to a higher level, said Al Mansouri.

Non-oil trade exchange between the two countries continued to grow over the past three years, hitting more than AED 2 billion in 2016, said the minister, noting that there are myriad opportunities in the offing to expand ties to the higher good of the two peoples.

"As part of the UAE Vision 2021, the UAE is seeking to build a competitive and diverse knowledge-based and innovation-oriented economy spearheaded by competent national cadres capable of developing an agile and flexible economic model resilient enough to survive global challenges and pressures," he added.

For his part, the Greek minister affirmed his country's keenness to develop bilateral relations with the UAE across multiple fields, particularly in economic domains. He commended the significant economic achievements made by the UAE and the impressive progress achieved at the level of the country's infrastructure over the past years.

He underscored the importance of doubling efforts to accelerate economic partnerships between the two countries and explore investment prospects in line with the two countries' developmental drives