Brnabic: We hope FTA with UAE will be finalised in 2023

DUBAI - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic said on Monday in Dubai she hoped talks about a FTA with the UAE would be finalised this year.

Speaking to reporters, Brnabic said she was greatly honoured to have met with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and added that they had discussed advancement of Serbia-UAE cooperation and that he had asked her to convey his regards to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

"Hopefully, we will complete the talks about a Serbia-UAE FTA in 2023, which would be very important for us. He shared with me the information that every country they have signed a FTA with tripled or quadrupled the volume of its cooperation as early as in the first year after the signing of the agreement," Brnabic said.

She said they had also discussed global challenges facing all countries of the world, including Serbia and the UAE, as well as ways of deepening further the cooperation in the IT sector, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, research and development of science.

"We already defined that in May last year through agreements on cooperation between the two governments. Our desire is for that cooperation to go even faster," said Brnabic, who is attending a World Government Summit in Dubai.

She also said the Serbian government had been presented as one of the most innovative ones when it comes to application of artificial intelligence.

"At this global fair of governments, we have been presented as one of the most innovative governments with our supercomputer solution and our application of supercomputers in artificial intelligence. We were selected as one of the nine most innovative solutions out of a total 1,084 prize entries," she said.