ABU DHABI / WAM First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) has announced the issuance of the year’s first Chinese Yuan (CNY) in the Formosa bond market with a CNY 1.5 billion five-year bond at 3.15 percent. This deal also represents the lowest coupon paid by a Mena bank on a public CNH five-year issuance. The successful offering was upsized to CNY ...

SHARJAH / WAM The Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its counterpart in Zanzibar to enhance cooperation and encourage commercial ties between the business communities of both countries. The agreement was virtually signed by Abdullah Sultan Al Owais, Chairman of the SCCI, and Ali Suliman, Chairman of Zanzibar National Chamber of ...

DUBAI / WAM Smart Dubai has announced Dubai Customs as the latest entity to join its Government Resource Planning Systems (GRPS), which is already implemented across 72 government departments, benefitting more than 75,000 employees in the emirate. The GRPS offers an integrated bundle of secure, standardised, central solutions, and, starting from January 10 will allow Dubai Customs officials and employees ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The fifth annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi will convene this year in an innovative and interactive virtual format, from January 19-22. The event will bring together senior government officials, industry executives, energy ministers and recognised thought leaders, to set the energy agenda for the year. The forum will once again be held ...

Dubai / WAM Dubai Municipality revealed that 1,303 new food establishments were opened during 2020 in the emirate, at the rate of 3.5 establishments per day. Sultan Al Taher, Director of Food Inspection Section at Dubai Municipality, said that total number of food establishments in Dubai at the end of last year reached 19,259, which is expected to reach 20,000 ...

DUBAI / WAM Dubai’s Department of Economic Development (Dubai Economy) on Tuesday announced that it issued 42,640 new licences in 2020, an increase of 4% from the 40,891 new licences issued in 2019. According to a recent report of Dubai Economy’s Business Registration & Licensing (BRL) sector, 64% of the new licences issued in 2020 were professional (27,307), 35% were ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, (Seha), the UAE’s largest healthcare network, has announced the opening of two Covid-19 Vaccination centre in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai, for members of the community who wish to receive the Beijing Institute of Biological Product’s inactivated vaccine. The Covid-19 vaccination centres, located in Abu Dhabi Cruise ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM In line with its plan to vaccinate more than 50 percent of the country’s population against Covid-19, the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced that 108,401 people have received the coronavirus vaccine over the last 24hrs, bringing to 1,275,652 the total number of jabs taken so far across the nation, at 12.09 doses per 100 ...

Sharjah / WAM The Expo Centre Sharjah hosted 20 specialised exhibitions in 2020, with the participation of more than 2,500 companies and brands, while adopting stringent precautionary and preventive measures to ensure the safety of visitors and exhibitors. This comes at a time when the international exhibitions industry was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Nine exhibitions were organised in ...

Bloomberg Another big battery project has been announced in Australia, as energy storage developers rush to profit from the nation’s abundant sunshine and wind resources. Origin Energy Ltd issued an expression of interest to firms to supply and install a 700-megawatt facility near the Eraring coal plant in New South Wales, with the first phase planned to start by the ...