Beginning January 1, 2016, UAE will take on chairmanship of Kimberley Process for the year, with Ahmed Bin Sulayem, the chairman of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, as chair, reports say.

In his role, Ahmad Bin Sulayem will work at strengthening the KP’s growth and reach, the associations between industry, government and civil society within the KP and assist new countries to be part of the KP, as per reports. He would also be looking into aspects like “undervaluation” of rough diamonds by some producing countries. In his role, he envisions the industry to work towards an internet cloud-based regime in which data can be passed through to the channels more quickly, as per reports. In this new role, UAE would host the Kimberly Process Intercessional meeting in May and the KP Plenary meeting in November, reports add.