Building on Regional Reputation

In conversation with Yousif Alkhanjari, Managing Partner, Assist Plus Accounting and Auditing Services

Assist Plus is a UAE based company, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, with a branch office in Dubai. The company was created to provide value-added financial services to clients across the whole UAE. Over the years, it has managed to establish itself as a company of stold and regional reputation.

Building on milestone achievements, we are one of the Federal Tax Authority agencies in the region. We are proud to have been selected in 2020 as one of the accounting firms in the UAE to conduct the assessment for potential government and semi-government clients and issue the national in-country ICV certificate to the private sector companies. This, for me, is a place of responsibility and community trust that I hold the highest regard for. I am delighted with how we are progressing; with the our offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” said Yousif Alkhanjari, Managing Partner, Assist Plus. “Further into the future, we are eyeing to expand in Saudi Arabia and Oman. So the scope of growth is immeasurable, and I am positive of what times ahead hold.”

Speaking about the significance of ICV certification, Alkhanjari, collectively with Assist Plus’s ICV Partner, Muhammad Aaliyan, described the “ICV or the In-Country Value Program as a catalyst for stimulating economic growth and social productivity. It is designed to gain optimal value, accelerate growth and develop our people. The main aim of ICV is to enable the country to create value within its ecosystem. It started three and half years back, pioneered by ADNOC. As a huge conglomerate, ADNOC was able to attract international partners to their projects. The foundational idea of ICV is to see how we can move a proportion of these investments to stay within the country. Today, the UAE Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology is tasked to ensure national implementation of the program. So basically, to make it simpler, what they are trying to do is to see how can the local suppliers, along with the public sector, which is the government and the semi-government entities how can they have a big percentage of their spending retained within the country.”

“The program itself actually steers into five main pillars — one is the supply chain management to be within UAE, recruiting the expatriate within the UAE, increasing the Emiratisation percentage within the private sector – this is part of the national wide strategic objectives, increasing total revenue from outside the UAE and lastly, strengthening the investment element. Through investment, we are trying to encourage and promote the local companies or even the international companies coming to UAE to be investing in UAE, whether it is property, plots or manufacturing in one of the free zones. This is also one of the essential elements that the program promotes in order to have direct foreign investment within the UAE,” he elaborated.

ICV is indeed a means to empower the country and its economy by investing in its resources. “The intent is to make UAE self-sufficient and even more progressive. We build from what we have, and as we empower our industries, I anticipate that export will soon become the fourth pillar of the program leading to further growth of the economy. So the future is bright with ICV,” concluded Alkhanjari.