The UAE cabinet on Monday approved a digital economy strategy to double the contribution of the digital economy to the GDP from 9.7% to 19.4% within the next 10 years. It also aims to transfer the UAE into a hub for digital economy regionally and globally.
The strategy includes more than 30 initiatives and programs targeting six sectors and five new areas of growth.
It will define the digital economy in the country, with a unified mechanism for measuring its growth while measuring its indicators periodically.
The strategy will define the priorities of digital economy in the country, ensuring the contribution of all other economic sectors to promote and support the digital economy.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, said: “Our goal is to increase the contribution of the digital economy sector to the non-oil GDP by 20 percent over the next 10 years.”
“We formed a Council for Digital Economy chaired by Omar bin Sultan al-Olama, the UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Teleworking Applications,” he added.
The cabinet also approved a federal law about the public finance. It compels federal authorities to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to achieve the financial strategy’s objectives.
It approved executive regulation of the federal decree-law on private education aimed at regulating the work of private schools in the country, in accordance with the objectives of the private education law, the provisions of which apply to all private schools in the UAE.
The executive regulation aims to enhance a high-level educational system that regulates the licensing mechanism for private schools, to ensure the quality of education and to place students among the best in the world in knowledge assessment tests.
The cabinet further adopted a unified framework to coordinate and organize the humanitarian and development work of the charitable institutions.
It includes a guide that organizes the seasonal work of all UAE donors concerned with foreign aids, in accordance with international standards, and in line with the UAE foreign aid policy and strategy.
This framework includes the establishment of coordinating offices in the country's missions abroad for foreign aid.
It will contribute to regulating financial transfers to donors, and the UAE charitable institutions in the beneficiary countries.
In addition to reviewing and discussing several reports, the cabinet approved an agreement to linking payment systems among GCC countries, an agreement with Brazil, two agreements with Denmark and an agreement with the United States.
