From left to right: Ramakant Jha, Director, Cropdata Technology Private Limited; Sachin Suri, Managing Director, Cropdata Technology Private Limited; Gautam Sashittal, CEO, DMCC; Sanjeev Dutta, Executive Director, Commodities, DMCC
DMCC (‘Dubai Multi Commodities Centre’), the Government authority on trade, enterprise and commodities in Dubai, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Cropdata Technology. Based in Nagpur, India, Cropdata’s mission is to enhance the country’s agricultural sector, while improving the lives of its farmers, which comprise some 55 percent of India’s population.
The objective of the memorandum is to explore how DMCC and Cropdata can collaborate to enhance bilateral trade relations with a focus on agricultural-based commodities, a sector that has shown remarkable stability, according to the World Bank’s Agricultural Price Index, with grains showing the most promise, posting 4 percent price gains in the first quarter of 2017. As one of the world’s biggest producers, India’s 2016-17 grains yield reached 136.2 million tonnes, according to the International Grains Council, up from 124.6 million the year before.
Sanjeev Dutta, Executive Director, Commodities, DMCC, said:
“We are committed to developing and leveraging new marketplaces and sectors, and this memorandum with Cropdata Technology is a natural step in that journey. Our scope of trade covers a broad range of food products, and food production issues having an increasingly wider global impact, agro goods occupy an increasingly strategic role in DMCC’s commodities mix. We are very pleased to work with Cropdata to identify areas where we can work together, as well as facilitate skills and knowledge transfer for our mutual benefit.”
The food trade has been an increasing focus for DMCC. Last year, DMCC created a dedicated Food Trade Group to address significant challenges facing the sector. The Group was formed to identify better ways to access finance, reduce trading risk, and maximise profit for stakeholders of all scales and sizes.
Sachin Suri, Managing Director, Cropdata Technology Private Limited, commented: “This collaboration is the beginning of our journey in the direction of bilateral trade growth between India and the United Arab Emirates and clearly underlines the various opportunities we could jointly explore innovatively in the IT and agriculture space.”
In line with its goal to position Dubai as a strategic hub for the agricultural trade, DMCC, in association with Dubai Customs, has also developed a wide range of powerful data tools to help stakeholders assess opportunities across commodities sectors.