Middle East economic ‘pivot’ to Asia to continue in 2025
In recent years, relations between the two blocs have been boosted by new Asean-GCC summits which began in October 2023 in Riyadh
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THE West has long had strong economic ties with the Middle East, not least given the latter’s huge endowments of the world’s oil reserves. However, Middle Eastern nations are increasingly looking East for returns on investment in Asia, including Asean.
This shift eastwards was underlined only last week when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in New Delhi with senior officials from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their latest bilateral strategic dialogue and joint commission meeting. One of the takeaways from this bilateral forum was a strong call for implementation of the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Corridor to foster connectivity and integration with Asia via a proposed route from India through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Greece.
The corridor concept – which would comprise vast road, railroad and shipping networks – was given new impetus in September 2023 at the G20 summit in New Delhi. A memorandum of understanding was signed to develop the project by the governments of India, the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy and the 27-member EU bloc.
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