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UK healthcare companies are expected to expand their strategic partnerships in the Middle East region as Britain leaves the European Union on Friday.
Speaking to Zawya on the sidelines of the Arab Health 2020 conference in Dubai, Paul McGrade, Senior Counsel at Lexington Communications, and a former advisor on EU treaty negotiations at the British Foreign Office and the European Commission in Brussels, said, “The UK government will be looking for ways to attract investments, and it will be looking for ways to strengthen the trade links with this region, which are already very good.”
According to a recent survey by the Association of British Health Industries (ABHI), more than half of their members expect an increase in exports to the Middle East over the next five years.
McGrade said that British companies “face huge uncertainty in terms of the trade relationship with the rest of Europe; they don’t know what will happen in the trade talks, they don’t know how long it will take, what trade terms they’ll end up with.”
He noted, however, that the scenario looks different for the Middle East. “This region is already a huge export destination. I think after China it’s the second biggest [destination] for health exports from the UK, so there’s a good base here already [with] traditional culture links. The UK brand is well known and well understood.”
According to Grand View Research, the market for medical technologies alone in the Middle East is expected to reach $31.6 billion by 2025. The growth is anticipated to be a result of an increasing geriatric population and the rise of conventional diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
“One of the things that companies as well as sovereign governments here need to be looking out for is the UK interest in bilateral trade deals, particularly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” McGrade said.
He noted that the priority for Britain now is to get the trade deal with the European Union done, but as soon as the matter is settled, it will be looking globally, and “those two bilateral trade deals will be high on the UK agenda.”
There were nearly $234 million in UK health exports and 19 new joint projects in the Middle East in 2017–2018, a 40 percent increase from 2016–2017, a report by Healthcare UK shows.
(Writing by Gerard Aoun; editing by Daniel Luiz)
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