UAE's DIFC plans to triple operations by 2024

Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) said Saturday it wrapped up its week-long roadshow in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai, where it announced its expansion plans to triple in size by 2024.

The DIFC said its 10-year strategy targets an increase in assets from 10.4 billion U.S. dollars to 250 billion dollars, balance sheet growth from 65 billion dollars to 400 billion dollars, and a financial company portfolio of 1,000 firms, up from 382 in June 2015.

The DIFC's plans are based on an expected economic growth along with China's New Silk Road and South-South corridor.

Founded in 2004, the DIFC is the biggest financial free zone in the Middle East, hosting 505 regulated entities.

This roadshow marked the DIFC second trip to China in 2015.

Earlier in the day, Essa Kazim, governor of DIFC, told reporters in Beijing that the center's position at the heart of Middle East, Africa and South Asia will help China catalyze the One Belt, One Road trade and investment initiative.

Twenty-one of the biggest banks in the world now run offices in the 110-acre DIFC district in the heart of the Gulf emirate.

The four big Chinese banks ICBC, China Construction Bank Corporation, Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China run branches in the financial center too. The non-financial PetroChina also has a branch.

"China is a strategic partner of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, today, its most important source of imports," Kazim said.

According to him, China and the wider Asian region are playing an increasingly significant role in the centre's rapid evolution.

China is Dubai's biggest non-oil trading partner, accounting for 47.6 billion dollars in trade volume in 2014, Kazim said.

Kazim added that some 200,000 Chinese live and work in Dubai, or 10 percent of its expatriate population, while an estimated 4,200 Chinese firms are based in the UAE. Endit