The Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED) has revealed the launch of its new ‘E-Investment Compass’ platform for the emirate's licensed business facilities (both commercial and industrial) through its website, www.added.gov.ae.
The Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED) has revealed the launch of its new ‘E-Investment Compass’ platform for the emirate's licensed business facilities (both commercial and industrial) through its website, www.added.gov.ae. The platform, which is part of ADDED's growing portfolio of smart digital services, aims to promote Abu Dhabi's digital transformation efforts and enhance its services to investors, businessmen and consumers.
H.E. Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, Chairman ADDED, explained that the ‘E-Investment Compass’ initiative is an interactive electronic platform which seeks to add value to the competitiveness of Abu Dhabi’s business and investment sector as it enables investors and businessmen to evaluate and further study their investment projects.
H.E. the Chairman further emphasized ADDED’s commitment to increase investments into the non-oil economic sectors which are huge contributors to the emirate’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and it is being done through the use of smart and technical solutions that facilitate the process for potential investors to efficiently make the decision and start their investment projects.
“We look forward to providing an integrated smart platform that would allow the investor to access essential data for his project’s feasibility study. The platform plays a key role in directing companies, individuals, consumers, and visitors to access commercial and services locations in the emirate, thus facilitating them to easily meet their requirements,” H.E. Al Shorafa added.
Al Shorafa further stated that the first phase of the ‘E-Investment Compass’ project is a robust start that will further strengthen the emirate’s position on the global investment map, offering investors with a smart and interactive access to the facility while being located anywhere in the world and hasten its decision to invest in Abu Dhabi, considering the integrated database, the digital smart services along with the easy procedure for doing business, and the various investment options.
H.E. Rashed Abdul Karim Al Balooshi, Undersecretary of ADDED said that the project’s initial stage comprises essential data covering business facilities that have been licensed to operate in the emirate. This includes key information such as trade name, license start and expiration dates, related activities, contact details, and other related information made available to investors, businessmen and customers; helping them to better identify and locate licensed economic facilities and their geographic distribution across the emirate's three regions, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Dhafra.
“We are launching the ‘E-Investment Compass’ platform on ADDED's website with the key aim of providing our customers with clear and accurate information about the locations of economic and investment activities in Abu Dhabi. This move will enable businessowners to identify the licensed activities across Abu Dhabi regions, which in turn will help them in choosing to select main investment sectors and opportunities to start their business activities,” Al Balooshi added.
H.E. the Undersecretary further pointed out that the initiative reflects ADDED’s continuing efforts to achieve its strategic goals of promoting investments and supporting the economic development and promote investments, particularly through supporting business owners and the provision all the required data, services and facilities.
By identifying the territory targeted for investment across the emirate’s three regions, the ‘E-Investment Compass’ initiative further provides access to the ideal investment locations and other essential information about represented activities located in a specified territory.
Moreover, the initiative also looks towards classifying economic activities from the most popular to the least. The number of activities registered to ADDED’s Abu Dhabi Business Center (ADBC) has recorded 3,031commercial activities, while the number of registered industrial activities at ADDED’s Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) has reached to 945, according to ISC4 classification.
To support local products and enable industrial investors to obtain their industry inputs and industrial activity requirements from the Abu Dhabi local market, the ‘E-Investment Compass’ platform enables investors to identify which are the ‘Made in Abu Dhabi’ products.
In addition, the ‘E-Investment Compass’ platform allows searching for the economic license and its sub-licenses under it through their trade name. It also provides information about outlets specialized in industrial inputs, which will help enhance the local supply chain of industrial products and establish an integrated database for industrial licenses within the services sector supporting the industrial sector.
The platform further provides a real estate rental index through an electronic board that shows the rental value of the units in the three areas of Abu Dhabi, enabling investors to determine the budget and expenses of the investment project, since the rent is considered one of the most important expenses and expenditures for any commercial or investment project.
The ‘E-Investment Compass’ does not only provide data for economic activities, but also provides an integrated range of information on other services such as restaurants, hotels, transportation and other services facilities that inform the investor on the range of services provided in the region being chosen for investment.