UAE: Dubai Economy

Boosting economic integration among the Gulf states has been a central objective of the GCC since the organisation was established in late May 1981. Indeed, while the six countries that make up the GCC – namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – have implemented joint projects in a wide variety of sectors, economic...

Adding to an already impressive list of firsts, Dubai’s neighbouring emirate of Sharjah added its first sovereign ratings at the beginning of 2014. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) both place the UAE’s third-largest emirate well inside investment grade. Away from the glare of publicity, Sharjah was home to the first airport in the Gulf,...

If real estate bubbles divide into two simplistic categories – sellers’ deception and buyers unwilling to heed available information – then Dubai’s problems of four years ago were of the latter kind. In the US and elsewhere, mortgage salespeople propagated the idea that property ownership, often at unsustainable mortgage rates, was the key to future...

After Thailand withdrew its bid to stage the World Expo 2020, Dubai became the favourite to win, as São Paolo was thought to be too far away from much of the world’s population, and Yekaterinburg was slipping because Russia was suffering from (mainly Western) bad press, a phenomenon that equally applied to Izmir, Turkey. Weeks before the...