The Middle East

In keeping with the educationalist philosophy of Sharjah’s ruler, Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, the emirate is home to two of the Gulf’s leading universities, as well as a cluster of research institutes and technical colleges.

Decades of growth in trade and foreign investment have seen the economies of the world become more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The production of goods and, increasingly, the provision of services has become fractured across borders as corporations create and integrate into regional and global value chains – a process...

The introduction of a flat 5% value-added tax on January 1, 2018 is part of ongoing efforts to boost government revenue and increase the overall transparency of the market. Although still in its early days, the move comes against a backdrop of positive sentiment among business leaders, as shown in the second iteration of Oxford Business Group’s...

The economy of Sharjah is highly diversified by regional standards, with oil and gas contributing less than 6% to GDP, and no individual sector accounting for more than 20%. The emirate has had particular success in developing its industrial and manufacturing sector through a network of free zones and industrial zones that continues to develop...

Sharjah’s neighbour and sister emirate, Dubai, is the centre of the Middle Eastern start-up economy, but Sharjah is also developing a culture of entrepreneurship, bolstered by support from the authorities, its well-developed education sector and its lower cost base.

When it comes to sharing and promoting Arab art and culture, Sharjah has been reaching out to the rest of world for decades. In 1998 the emirate founded the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture, and in 2006 Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, ruler of Sharjah, established the Sharjah Museums Project. This has since grown into a complex of...