Your Excellency Minister Siluanov, Madam President, Excellencies, distinguished guests,
The United Arab Emirates extends its sincere appreciation to the Russian Federation for hosting us in Moscow for the 11th Annual Meetings of the New Development Bank. We also convey our gratitude to the New Development Bank for the excellent arrangements and warm hospitality.
I would like to begin by reaffirming the UAE’s steadfast commitment to advancing global economic cooperation and promoting multilateralism and constructive dialogue to address global growth and development challenges. We remain committed to promoting long-term economic growth and sustainable development, supporting platforms with active representation of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), and supporting an open, rules-based global trading system to advance our shared prosperity.
We fully support this year’s theme on financing development in an era of rapidly advancing technological trends. NDB’s role, as a global development institution created by EMDEs for EMDEs, remains highly relevant to ensure the benefits of new innovations are equitably distributed globally.
Emerging technologies are rapidly evolving and require a nuanced understanding. For example, AI offers a lot of potential to support sustainability, efficiency, resilience, and innovation in our economies, and NDB can support member countries in promotion of more resource-efficient and context-appropriate AI deployment models.
In particular, we believe it is critical for EMDEs to have enabling policies to attract and deploy these technologies, infrastructure advancement especially in telecommunications, and manpower capabilities to develop a capable workforce that can maintain and further advance these technologies. Given the varied levels of technological development and regulatory frameworks among NDB members, NDB can provide a platform, research collaboration, and best-practice, policy and governance dialogue.
In the UAE, we believe technology to be one of the foundations of a competitive, diversified economy. The UAE’s Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, launched in 2017, spans multiple sectors and focuses on responsible, large-scale adoption of AI to transform government services and drive innovation. It is supported by the UAE Council for AI that oversees AI integration in government departments and the education sector.
This year, we announced a plan to transform 50% of our government sectors and services within two years to agentic AI models capable of independently executing tasks, managing processes and supporting decision-making. The UAE has also created a new role- the ‘Chief Executive Officer for AI’ – in ministries and federal entities. To build capacity for our youth to manage digital assets and AI-driven fiscal planning, the Ministry of Finance has launched a Leaders of Finance program, as part of a broader national strategy to develop talent for the digital economy. Later this year, the UAE will also be co-hosting the 2026 UN Water Conference with Senegal, where technology and innovative solutions for water finance will be a key theme, and I invite Your Excellencies to the UAE to participate in the Conference.
Let me conclude by once again expressing our sincere appreciation to the Russian Federation and the New Development Bank for hosting these meetings. The UAE remains committed to supporting the NDB in advancing the role of the Global South as a leading force in shaping and harnessing the opportunities of the new technological revolution.
Thank you.