His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and His Excellency Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of the Republic of India, have laid the foundation stone for Bharat Mart, during a ceremony at the World Governments Summit 2024.
DP World unveiled plans for Bharat Mart, a Dubai marketplace set to open in 2026 that will offer a world-class trading platform for Indian manufacturers and exporters to access global markets.
HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai, also attended the ceremony on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. S Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister of India; Ajit Doval KC, National Security Advisor of India; Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India; Sunjay Sudhir, Ambassador of India to the UAE; Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World, and members of DP World’s senior leadership team.
Spanning an area of 2.7 million square feet, with the first phase encompassing 1.3 million square feet, Bharat Mart is poised to become a mega distribution hub for Indian businesses to trade domestically in the UAE and re-export to regional and global markets.
The market will be situated in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) and will be part of a wider ecosystem of trade that DP World is developing through the Dubai Traders Market, a hybrid retail and wholesale marketplace that will host traders from around the world.
Bharat Mart is planned to house 1,500 showrooms catering to retail and wholesale customers, and over 700,000 square feet of Grade A warehousing space, providing tenants with combined free zone and onshore benefits. The facility will also offer light industrial units, office spaces and meeting facilities.
Bharat Mart will be conveniently located 11km from Jebel Ali Port, the largest seaport in the Middle East, and 15km from Al Maktoum International Airport, providing seamless multimodal logistics solutions for Indian exporters. Though the Jebel Ali ecosystem, traders will have direct connectivity to more than 150 maritime destinations and air links to over 300 cities.
Dubai plays a significant role in the trade relationship between the UAE and India, with 87% or $44.9 billion of the total non-oil trade value of $51.4 billion flowing through the Emirate in 2022. Close to 1,500 Indian businesses have made Jafza their home in the UAE, trading more than five million metric tonnes of cargo valued at $8.6 billion.
SouRce：DP WORLD
