United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi Launches a unified economic licence to enhance ease of doing business

06 Jun 2024

On 6 June 2024, the Department of Economic Development of Abu Dhabi launched the Unified Economic Licence to enhance ease of doing business for investors and entrepreneurs, which unifies procedures for registering economic licences across the Emirate and its free zones, in a move to streamline business setup and reinforce governance and transparency. This will introduce a standardised reference number for all licences and ensure that company data remains current within a newly integrated Abu Dhabi registry, simplifying data management and fostering collaboration between free zones and mainland authorities.

  • UNCTAD has been collecting information on changes in national foreign direct investment (FDI) policies on an annual basis since 1992. This collection has provided input to the analysis of global and regional investment policy trends in the World Investment Report, the Investment Policy Monitors and the UNCTAD-OECD Reports on G20 Measures.

    In 2024, to further strengthen the quality of reporting, UNCTAD revised the methodology of monitoring investment policy measures. and revised the measures going back to 2012 accordingly.

    The Investment Policy Monitor provides the international investment community with country-specific, up-to-date information about the latest developments in foreign investment policies.

    Through its monitoring of investment policy changes, UNCTAD offers cutting-edge and innovative contributions to investment policy discourse, and contributes to preparing the ground for future policymaking in the interest of making foreign investment work for sustainable development.

  • The UNCTAD's Investment Policy Monitor database include official measures affecting FDI adopted by United Nations Member States. These encompass measures explicitly targeting FDI (FDI-specific), as well as general investment measures with a clear impact on foreign investment (FDI-related). The measures are either reported directly to UNCTAD by Member States through annual surveys or identified by UNCTAD researchers through publicly accessible sources (such as government websites and specialized policy databases). The classification of measures as more or less favourable is based solely on their potential impact on investors.

    Note: Measures are verified, to the fullest extent possible, by referencing government sources. The compilation of measures is not exhaustive.

    Disclaimer: the boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.

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