The leadership of this country took the wise decision to diversify the economy away from the previous reliance on oil and gas.

The UAE is now very successfully focused on the service and manufacturing sectors, which are the areas where we see the highest potential in our cooperation.

Italy's specialized manufacturing districts are models of cluster development. Investment in them would help the UAE economy become even more independent from oil and gas, and advance the government objective of achieving a greater focus on a knowledge based economy.

Our friend Sultan Al Mansouri visited Italy recently and has first-hand knowledge of our productive reality.

In the last 12 months my government has taken a number of steps to further improve the business environment. The reform package has significantly reduced red tape and modernized the public administration, strengthened the legal framework, increased competition and made the labour and economic in general more flexible and dynamic. The OECD recently estimated the reforms will add 4 percentage points to Italy's GDP over 10years.

Now let me turn to the Italian presence in the UAE. Italian companies need to further explore the opportunities offered by the dynamic economy here in the UAE. We are not talking about relocating production capacity but rather strengthening a consolidated presence in the UAE. This can help the overall growth of the Italian companies, boosting their home base and main production facilities in Italy.

This country, and especially Dubai, is a natural hub for serving the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The development of a more structured presence here would allow Italian companies and their Emirati partners to establish a more effective base to serve the vast markets of those macro-regions.

We have to exploit the complementarily of our two economic systems. Synergy and co-investments between Italy and UAE should become a by-word for the development of initiatives in the GCC market but also in third countries, especially in North Africa.