UAE's Ministry of Economy to Make Metaverse Debut: Details

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has significantly increased its pace in adopting blockchain and Web3 technologies. In a fresh development, the UAE Ministry of Economy has announced plans of inaugurating a headquarters in the metaverse. UAE Economy Minister Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri made the announcement earlier this week, while addressing the Dubai Metaverse Assembly. Alongside Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the ministry has called its metaverse the country’s “third address”. With this launch, the ministry is exploring avenues to expand the use cases of Web3 technologies.

In a live tour of the virtual office, Marri showed that great while lobbies with lavish interiors have been created for the Ministry of Economy’s office in the metaverse. A decked-up virtual auditorium looked ready to host events and conferences. People will be able to visit the metaverse office as avatars and will also be able to sign legally binding documents, eliminating the need for signatories to visit one of their physical locations just for signatures.

“Our digital address represents the full building of the ministry. Each floor can serve different purposes. A visitor will get a virtual ticket/ token and a notification will be sent to our customer happiness centre to let the visitor enter our office in metaverse,” said Khalifa Al Jaziri, who is the avatar representing the ministry in metaverse.

A Nasdaq report expects the market opportunity for the metaverse to reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,719 crore) by 2024.

UAE has lined-up a bunch of promising projects ready to feature in the metaverse.

In April, UAE’s Emirates airlines announced its entry into the metaverse and non-fungible token (NFT) sectors.

In May, Dubai’s recently formed Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) officially began work on its metaverse presence. Having partnered with metaverse player The Sandbox, VARA has disclosed plans of creating a virtual headquarter in the digital world. This VARA office in The Sandbox is called ‘MetaHQ’.

Back in July, the UAE had announced plans to launch the world’s first hospital in the metaverse, where patients will be able to visit for virtual consultations in the form of avatars.