Amazon.ae Becomes First E-Commerce Retailer on UAE Price Platform

The Ministry of Economy and Tourism has signed a collaboration with Amazon UAE to extend the price comparisons available on its Essential Goods Prices Platform, making the company the first e-commerce retailer to join a service that had until now drawn its pricing from physical stores.

Amazon.ae prices are already live on the platform, so the comparison is available now rather than at some future launch date. Shoppers can weigh them against the prices charged at 12 major physical retail outlets, seeing in one place how an online grocery list prices up against what the same items cost in stores.

The ministry described the aim as strengthening smart shopping for consumers and supporting price transparency and fair competition across the UAE market.

The two sides recorded the arrangement in a Memorandum of Understanding signed at the ministry's headquarters in Dubai. H.E. Abdulla Ahmed Al Saleh, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy and Tourism, signed for the ministry. Ronaldo Mouchawar, Vice President on behalf of Amazon Middle East, Africa and Turkey, signed for the company. H.E. Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, the Minister of Economy and Tourism, attended the signing.

Bin Touq called the collaboration a transformative step that enhances digital connectivity between government and e-commerce retailers and applies advanced technologies to consumer protection and transparency in online selling. He said it also contributes to market efficiency, boosts the competitiveness of the digital economic ecosystem and supports integration between the data and digital services offered to the public.

The platform launched in April. It monitors prices in real time across 33 product categories — 17 covering essential consumer goods and 16 covering other commodities — and displays the lowest and highest price available at each outlet. A grocery basket tool lets a shopper assemble the items they intend to buy and see where that selection would cost least. Someone who fills the same basket at each outlet gets a total to compare rather than a shelf-by-shelf guess. Prices are listed category by category rather than steered toward a single recommended seller.

Under the agreement, Amazon's pricing data will be refreshed regularly according to technical and data security standards the ministry has approved.

Grocery price checking has usually meant walking between shops or trusting the offers a retailer chooses to advertise. Putting a marketplace's catalogue into a state-run tool changes the reference point. An online price sits beside the shelf price, and the basket function scores each outlet on a whole shop rather than on one discounted line. Publishing the spread between the cheapest and dearest outlet in a category is a different kind of pressure from a weekend promotion, and it is awkward to withdraw once shoppers are used to it. For the ministry, the addition widens the field of sellers appearing in the same frame, online and offline, as coverage is built out category by category.