The Ministry of Economy yesterday announced it has updated the UAE trade figures app up to the end of 2014, as part of its renewed focus on providing smart data services to residents and citizens of the country. The trade statistics application can be found on the ministry's official website (http://www.economy.ae).

The step is in line with the ‘smart' directives of the UAE leadership that has urged the federal government to further reach out to the public through the regular launch of innovative services and continued updating of various apps and e-services. The trade statistics application is an important tool for individuals, businesses and public institutions for obtaining up-to-date numbers that are crucial to all trade transactions in the current business landscape.

Abdullah Al Saleh, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Economy for Foreign Trade and Industry, said: "In line with the federal government directives, the Ministry of Economy is working to achieve the highest level of transparency and competitiveness. The current update fulfils a long-perceived need for recent and relevant information in the trading sector.

"With the help of the economic experts at the Ministry, we have revised the trade statistics application to include all data and information gathered up to the end of 2014. We are keen to provide an integrated IT platform that will help investors and businessmen in the UAE plan out their economic and investment policies and strategies for the wider benefit of the country and its trade with global partners."

Al Saleh pointed out that application is the first-of-its-kind in the region to display trade data in an extremely interactive, user-friendly and dynamic manner. The app also helps save time and effort with its ability to make a number of comparisons based on different time periods, geographical areas, and types of commodities.

The Under-Secretary also shared that in addition to the updated 2014 trade statistics, the revisions also included comprehensive data on commodity flows for non-oil goods, as well as exports, re-exports and imports of the UAE with more than 220 countries extending from 1999 until 2014. Furthermore, the information can be easily extracted and exported to various desktop applications such as the MS Office suite of Excel and Word, as well as the PDF format, among others.

Notably, the application was first launched in 2010 to provide a modern and user-friendly platform for foreign trade statistics. The number of application users every month currently averages between 1,000 and 1,500 from the UAE and several other countries globally, including India, Brazil, the US, China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Italy.
Source: WAM