The Middle East

Sitting atop the world’s seventh-largest oil and gas reserves, the UAE will long have a leadership role within the global energy sector. This is supported by the world’s continued demand for energy, which will be advantageous for the UAE economy. In addition, most economic forecasts project annual GDP growth to rise at an average rate of 4% over the next few years. With...

Demand for prime residential properties rose in the first half of 2013, as government employees prepared to comply with a new rule requiring that they live within the emirate to qualify for the government housing allowance. Announced in 2012 and effective as of September 2013, the rule applies to Abu Dhabi’s 23,000 government employees, of which...

As construction projects ramped up in 2013, the Statistics Centre - Abu Dhabi (SCAD) announced plans to expand the number of indicators included in its monthly report on construction costs. By the end of the year, SCAD announced that it would begin monitoring the price of land and transport in the building material price reports, which currently...

In January 2009, on the eve of the second World Future Energy Summit, Abu Dhabi’s government announced that by 2020 at least 7% of the emirate’s power generation capacity would come from renewable sources. In the half decade since then, Abu Dhabi has become one of the Gulf’s most prominent players in the areas of energy sustainability and...

In the 1970s, the government of Abu Dhabi perceived the importance of diversifying its economy away from hydrocarbons. The vision of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s first president, was crystallised when his son, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, set up the pillars of Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030....