Indian minister for Urban Development Kamal Nath has discussed mechanisms for development of the economic partnership between India and the UAE with UAE foreign trade minister Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, it was announced here on Monday.

The two sides discussed various potential growth opportunities in the UAE and India and the possibility of holding meetings between companies of the two countries to explore investment opportunities and strike joint investment and commercial venture deals, a statement released by UAE official news agency Wam said.

Sheikha Lubna stressed on the keenness of the UAE to boost trade and investment ties with India in all fields, considering the fact that India was the UAE's top trading partner in 2010.

Kamal Nath said the existing investment opportunities in the two countries will pave the way for broader cooperation for the private sectors and businesses in both countries.

The volume of mutual trade between the UAE and India during 2010 stood at 163 billion dirhams, while trade in the first quarter of 2011 amounted to 69 billion dirhams, a growth of 68 per cent year-on-year.

The value of the UAE's exports to India was 10 billion dirhams in the first quarter of 2011, a 12 per cent growth rate y-o-y, while its imports totalled 36 billion dirhams, a growth of 69 per cent.

The value of Indian products re-exported by the UAE stood at 23 billion dirhams, a 100 per cent growth compared to the first quarter of 2010.

Speaking on the occasion, Kamal Nath said that a new world order is emerging on the global economic front, as the gravity of economic growth has shifted to the East.

"The continued and deepening financial and fiscal crisis in the West is a sign that those economies can no longer carry the world. The Western economies are too saturated and too leveraged to sustain economic growth for either themselves or for the rest of the world," he said.

"The world needs to realign its compass as the gravity of economic growth has shifted to the East," he added.

Nath said that the Arab world and in particular, the UAE, can be on the winning side of this transition, as it has a huge location advantage, being situated at the junction of the new growth continents of Asia and Africa.

The Indian Minister noted that one of the challenges facing the growing economies of Asia and the Middle East is how to make the growth inclusive.

"It has become a challenge in India and also in the Middle East on how do we have growth which is inclusive and which touches all sections of the society and which reaches all parts of the country," he added.

Also speaking at the opening session, Pakistani Federal Minister and Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) chairperson Farzana Raja said that any further deepening of the financial crisis in Europe could lead to a sharper growth slowdown in Asian economies, which were already battling inflationary pressures, leading to monetary tightening.