UAE Minister of Economy Abdullah bin Touq headed to India with a bevy of Emirati business leaders in tow as the world’s most populous nation looms ever larger as a magnet for sovereign investment.

Bin Touq is leading a trade delegation that will engage with top government officials and corporate chieftains in India, which is the UAE’s third largest trade partner.

The tour, which will feature a business conference on Wednesday in the framework of the UAE’s Investopia Global Talks, follows reciprocal visits to each other’s country this year by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The UAE is far from alone in courting India. An analysis by U.S.-based Invesco found that 88% of sovereign wealth funds, including all of those in the Middle East, consider the Indian subcontinent to be the most attractive target for investment among emerging markets.

The report notes the interest Saudi Investment Minister Khalid Al-Falih expressed last year in establishing a branch of the Public Investment Fund in India’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City and channeling capital to Indian startups.

Also steering investment decisions are the winds of war roaring through Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the Red Sea, according to Invesco, which found that 95% of the region’s sovereign wealth fund managers see geopolitical tensions as the most serious risk to economic growth over the coming 12 months.

Saudi Arabia’s determination to develop an electric vehicle industry and expand its role in the international mining industry is taking its leaders to South America. 

Bandar Alkhorayaf, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, will visit Brazil and Chile over the coming two weeks as the world’s leading oil exporter seeks to expand its international presence in mining.

In Brazil, talks will cover mining, food processing and aviation, while in Chile the focus is on lithium, needed for electric vehicle batteries. 

Alkhorayaf will land in Brazil today and leave for Chile, the world’s second largest producer of lithium, next Sunday. In Brazil, he will meet with executives from mining company Vale.

In Chile, Alkhorayaf will meet Mining Minister Aurora Williams, as well as mining companies Antofagasta and Codelco, a state-run company tasked with bringing the Chilean government into the lithium industry.

Back home for the minister, troves of minerals lie beneath Saudi Arabia that are critical to powering the energy transition such as gold, phosphate, bauxite, copper, zinc and nickel.

The Public Investment Fund’s Ma’aden mining company is tasked with tapping the resources, last valued at $2.5 trillion, making it one of the most significant potential contributors to the kingdom’s economic transformation ambitions.

The Dubai skyline is set to get its own Trump tower as former U.S. President Donald Trump – who accepted the Republican party’s nomination to the top of the ticket in Milwaukee, WI on Thursday night –gets in on the property boom underway in the UAE’s biggest city. 

The Trump Organization is partnering with Dar Global, the Dubai-based international arm of Saudi Arabia’s largest developer Dar Al Arkan, to build Trump Tower Dubai.

The skyscraper will house a new members-only club called The Trump Private, a hotel and residences, according to a statement from Dar Global. The cost of the project or a completion date were not revealed but design plans are expected towards the end of this year.

The deal comes as the Donald Trump-owned developer makes a push into the Arabian Peninsula, having announced two other projects in the region with Dar Global in recent weeks: a $500 million golf resort in Oman and a high-rise tower planned in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The Trump Organization has a real estate portfolio of resorts, hotels, apartment buildings and golf courses in parts of the U.S. like New York, Chicago and Hawaii, as well as international locales in some of the world’s fastest growing economies like India, Indonesia and Turkey.

The firm already has a presence in Dubai as part of a partnership with developer Damac for two golf properties in Damac’s Akoya development.

Amid efforts by all the Gulf states to wean their economies off dependence on oil and develop alternative fuels, the UAE is pushing to get more of its power from nuclear energy.

Four months after the UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant became 100% operational, the government is exploring the possibility of building a second nuclear facility, Reuters reports.

“The government is looking at this option, Hamad Alkaabi, the UAE’s Ambassador to Austria and Permanent Representative to the UN’s nuclear agency, told the news agency.

“No final decision has been made in terms of the tender process but I can tell you that the government is actively exploring this option.”

Any contract for a new nuclear power plant would be worth tens of billions of dollars and could attract tender bids from China, Russia and the U.S., among others, Reuters said.

The government has yet to budget for a second power plant or decide on the size or the location, but Alkaabi said it was possible a tender could be issued this year.

UAE property tycoon Mohamed Alabbar plans to invest up to $3 billion in Indonesia’s tourism sector.

Alabbar’s Eagle Hills Properties, an Abu Dhabi-based private real estate investment and development company, inked the one-year deal with Indonesia’s Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises in the presence of Indonesian President Joko Widodo and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

Alabbar, who also heads Dubai’s largest developer, Emaar, visited Nusantara, where the Indonesian capital is being relocated, in May where he expressed interest in investing.

The deal to help develop and upgrade airport infrastructure and state-owned hotels comes as President Widodo has been wooing foreign investors before his final term ends this year.

Abu Dhabi alternative energy firm Masdar plans to sell more dollar-denominated green bonds as it forges on with global expansion plans.

The renewable-power company plans to offer five and 10-year green bonds in two tranches, Bloomberg reports.

Green bonds are a kind of fixed-income product used to fund projects that have positive environmental benefits.

The move follows up on $750 million worth of green bonds the company sold last year and statements that it would issue as much as $1 billion worth of green bonds this year.

The firm, which counts Taqa, Mubadala and ADNOC as owners, is targeting stakes in 100 gigawatts of clean projects by 2030 including a big push into the U.S. 

Mubadala-backed Aldar Properties has signed an agreement with DP World to develop a 1.55 million-square-foot logistics park as Abu Dhabi’s biggest real estate developer looks to expand in Dubai and respond to e-commerce driven demand for warehousing.

The project at National Industries park in the Jebel Ali neighborhood of Dubai gives Aldar access to develop and lease assets in a strategic location between Dubai’s major port and Al Maktoum International Airport.

The deal comes at a time when the UAE is jockeying for position in the global supply chain and to play a role in the region’s future food security.

The agreement with DP World is part of a $270 million investment Aldar announced in January to expand its logistics real estate business in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

As China seeks to strengthen economic ties with the Gulf, investors from the world’s second biggest economy are getting an opportunity to place their bets on Saudi stocks while paying with their own currency.

Two exchange-traded funds focused on Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, debuted today in the corporate centers of Shanghai and Shenzhen that will enable investors to put Chinese yuan directly into Saudi businesses and access information in Chinese, Bloomberg reports.

China emerged last year as Saudi Arabia’s most active foreign investor, pouring $16.8 billion into the kingdom and accounting for 58% of new business investments – primarily focused on automotive, metals and semiconductor investments. That was more than 11 times the $1.5 billion that China invested in Saudi Arabia in 2023, according to Dubai-based Emirates NBD.

At the Shenzhen stock exchange today, the China Southern Asset Management CSOP Saudi Arabia ETF QDII started trading after raising 634 million yuan ($87 million), Bloomberg reported.  A second fund, the Huatai-PineBridge CSOP Saudi Arabia ETF QDII, began trading in Shanghai after raising 590 million yuan.

China Southern’s ETF targets investors “who have knowledge in equity markets, have demand for global asset allocation and have confidence in the energy sector,” said Mao Wei, the asset manager’s chief equity investment officer, according to Bloomberg. “People will pay more attention to Saudi Arabia looking at the energy and financial sector” compared with U.S. or Japan investment options, Wei said.