Clearing road ahead for two-way trade

Frances Moffett-Kouadio is the director of trade and investment at the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi. She talks about trying to make trade between the UK and the UAE a busy two-way street.

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What's your mandate?

The primary purpose is to help UK companies trade and invest overseas, but we also look for companies here that would be good inward investors back into the UK. We have a joint economic committee and through that committee we have a target that we have to raise our bilateral trade in goods and services from £7.5 billion (Dh44.12bn) in 2009 to £12bn by 2015 - and that's two-way. And, actually, things are looking pretty good. In the first four months of this year trade in goods alone is up 26.5 per cent.

What kind of services do you provide to UK companies interested in opening here?

It can be anything from your basic market research to identifying a potential agent, to a programme of calls that we accompany them to a massive launch event in the ambassador's garden. It can be anything. Last year we probably helped more than 2,500 companies. Sometimes the best thing you can say is actually this is not the market for you.

And how do you help UAE businesses that operate in the UK?

When Etihad [Airways] were looking to set up their call centre in Europe, we were able to get them lots of data that compared the various locations they were looking at around Europe and the advantages and disadvantages of all of them. Obviously we were very keen for them to opt for Manchester. We knew it wouldn't be their cheapest option but we knew it would be a really strong choice in terms of the languages it could provide and the workforce.

Is that where they chose?

Yes, they did. We were very, very pleased.

Are you back and forth a lot then?

Our busiest period is normally between September and Easter. I went back to the UK in January for an education event. I went back in March for a police and security event … and then I went back in May. We took a business delegation from the UAE back to a fire and security show in Birmingham. I also went back last month, again with a UAE delegation, for an undersea defence technology show and I'm going back next week.

So that's a yes. Was it difficult for you to get familiar with local customs?

I have worked in UK trade and investment since 2004 and I had worked on Iraq as my first job. It was immediately after the second conflict, so I had visited the Levant, because we couldn't go to Iraq, but we went to Jordan. I had also taught in a London secondary comprehensive and one of my jobs was in Tower Hamlets and 95 per cent of the students were Muslims. The ambassador at the time was an Arabist. He had been here about two years so anything I didn't know he was able to advise.

business@thenational.ae