UAE: Economy grows despite regional crisis

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Att.Editors: The following item is by the United Arab Emirates news agency (WAM)

ABU DHABI, May 16 2003 (IPS) - The United Arab Emirates (UAE) economy and its various sectors continue to enjoy stability and significant growth despite the tense atmosphere and the negative political and military situation which engulfed the region and shook some of the biggest economies of the world to their roots, according to indices and economic trends.

The stability and growth, which seems to be unique to the UAE economy, at least compared to other countries in the region if not in the world, reflect the true expectations of UAE officials before and in the aftermath of the war on Iraq.

Officials had predicted that the UAE would be the least affected by the war and that the country was capable of quickly overcoming regional crisis. This can be attributed to the dynamism and flexibility of the country’s local market and its ability to absorb and overcome shocks, a fact that international economic and financial institutions bear testimony to.

At a time when a large number of countries, including Arab countries, were licking their wounds and checking their losses in billions of dollars as a result of the crisis, the same thing can not be said about the UAE, and if the country has suffered any loss at all it is a meager one which the country was able to quickly overcome.

In other cases, losses that were expected turned up quickly to produce positive results and developments. Some local economic indices today show that the performances of 16 local share holding companies, which announced their quarterly report of this year, were very good and more than expected, chalking profits of more than 18 percent, a profit of about Dhs1.869 billion (more than 509 million dollars) against Dhs1.580 billion (530.5 million dollars) during the same period last year.

The report also showed that 11 national banks have achieved a profit of Dhs1.145 billion (312 million dollars), an increase of 15 percent compared to last year’s of Dhs999 million (272.2 million dollars). This reflects the experience gained by the national banks, over the period of time, in dealing with emergency regional and international developments and crisis.

The performances of a number of tourism companies, the hardest hit during the crisis, was greater than expected as a number of those companies achieved good results compared to the previous year’s.

The indices also showed that transactions on the local stock market were more than expected as stock exchange transaction rose in the first four months of the year by 93 percent to reach about Dhs532 million (144.9 million dollars) against Dhs275 million (74.93 million dollars) last year.