Boon for critical minerals, education in trade pact | The Canberra Times | Canberra, ACT
Boon for critical minerals, education in trade pact

By Dominic Giannini

Updated November 6 2024 - 5:56pm, first published 5:52pm

Australia has inked a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates, opening the faucet on investment from the Gulf nation's multi-trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund.

Significant investment is expected to flow before the end of 2024, Trade Minister Don Farrell said after signing the pact with counterpart Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi on Wednesday.

The federal government is looking to diversify critical mineral exports, with Australia having some of the world's largest deposits of the rare earths needed to make renewable energy technology.

"We are really looking forward to working with our good friends in UAE to extract those products and to develop them," Senator Farrell said ahead of the signing.

The agreement strips tariffs on 99 per cent of Australian exports, and further memorandums of understanding on agriculture, data centres and investment were signed on Wednesday.

It further opens up the Middle Eastern nation as an education and research hub by removing the need to have an Australian-owned education operation enter a joint venture to operate in the UAE.

Australian education service providers will also be able to bid for UAE government contracts.

UAE Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra, who thanked him for his nation's help in evacuating Australian citizens from Lebanon as the security situation deteriorated.

Two-way trade of $10 billion and two-way investment of more than $20 billion were exchanged in 2023.

The Australian government put forward a list of more than 50 investment-ready mining and resource projects across the country.

Among them is the Butcherbird manganese mine project in WA, operated by Australian-based explorer Element 25 whose managing director Justin Brown said the company would also be interested in opening a refinery in the Middle East.

"We're currently undertaking an expansion of the mine ... and basically we could bring manganese ore to that part of the world, which is a key part of steel," he told AAP.