United Arab Emirates Trade Policy Review

This paper reviews the WTO's first Trade Policy Review (TPR) of the United Arab Emirates. The TPR raises a number of concerns about barriers to foreign investment and competition. In reviewing the evaluation, the approach adopted in this paper is to elaborate on two main issues, insufficiently developed in the TPR. The first is investment treaties, which are treated by the UAE as legally superior to and prevailing over domestic legal instruments. The second is free trade zones, which constitute an economic enclave free of barriers to foreign investment and competition. The paper provides preliminary statistical evidence on the relationship between inward FDI, free trade zones and bilateral investment treaties, suggesting the presence of a statistically significant positive association between the three. The evidence lends initial support to the concerns raised by the review.