Abu Dhabi Global Market, ADGM, today announced an initiative to launch a FinTech digital sandbox. The digital sandbox allows financial institutions, FIs, and FinTech innovators to come together to experiment on products and solutions in a digital platform environment, supported by regulatory standards developed by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, FSRA, of ADGM. The ADGM digital sandbox will provide a marketplace for open collaboration between FIs, FinTech firms, and regulators to facilitate testing and adoption of innovative digital financial products and services that can benefit the industry in the region.

The Federal Tax Authority (FTA) has reaffirmed that Cabinet Decision No. (42) of 2018 on Marking Tobacco and Tobacco Products establishes an accurate and effective control system, allowing FTA to efficiently collect taxes, ensure transparency and combat tax evasion. The scheme is set to be implemented in collaboration with the relevant authorities to ensure a single integrated set of procedures is rolled out, guaranteeing the protection of rights and responsibilities of Taxable Persons, as well as ensuring transparency with regards to the procedures that regulate their relationship with FTA.

Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) will host the annual meetings of the Arab Federation of Exchanges (AFE) in Abu Dhabi on 16th -17th September in the presence of a number of CEOs of member stock exchanges and general managers of Clearing Settlement and Depository centres in the Arab world. The two-day meetings will discuss issues and aspects related to the development of mechanisms of action at Arab stock exchanges as well as ways of promoting Arab financial markets and benefiting from the experience of the member exchanges.

The Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has launched the first National Nuclear Science for Development Student Competition in cooperation with the UAE Ministry of Education, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) and Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC).

Yahsat, a leading global satellite operator based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and wholly owned by Mubadala Investment Company, and Hughes Network Systems (HUGHES), a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ : SATS ), today announced an agreement to enter into a joint venture to provide commercial Ka-band satellite broadband services across Africa, the Middle East and southwest Asia.