Industry
From The Report: Dubai 2016
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With a long-standing status as one of Dubai’s key economic contributors, activity in the industrial sector has been a major contributor to non-oil GDP for the emirate. Even as Dubai’s government has invested heavily in areas such as ICT in recent years, industrial activity has remained a central component of the emirate’s long-term economic diversification plan. While some figures from 2015 point to slowing growth in the sector overall – with manufacturing trade for 2015 down 3% year-on-year, recent trends highlight several high-performing segments. With higher lending rates to the sector recorded in 2015 and the launch of a new industrial strategy and investment plan by the government in 2016, there seems significant scope to continue to develop and diversify Dubai’s manufacturing base, which is currently highly focused in a few subsectors.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Towards market maturity: Strong fundamentals have underpinned steady expansion in key industrial segments
OBG
plus

With a long-standing status as one of Dubai’s key economic contributors, activity in the industrial sector has been a major contributor to non-oil GDP for the emirate. Even as Dubai’s government has invested heavily in areas such as ICT in recent years, industrial activity has remained a central component of the emirate’s long-term economic diversification plan. While some figures from 2015 point to slowing growth in the sector overall – with manufacturing trade for 2015 down 3% year-on-year…

Analysis

Concentrated development: Industrial areas and free zones serve as an economic backbone
OBG
plus

Since Dubai’s initial forays into state-led industrial development in the 1970s and 1980s, growth in light and heavy manufacturing, logistics and other related areas has taken place almost exclusively in the context of the emirate’s numerous industrial parks and free zones. Indeed, the organisation of Dubai’s economic development into discrete geographic clusters, each dedicated to a different sector, can be hailed as a prescient decision on the part of the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum,…

Analysis

High-tech agriculture: Hydroponics technology has the potential to improve food security and drive economic growth
OBG
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Over the past decade Dubai has earned a reputation as a centre for agricultural development planning and, more recently, technological innovation in farming and related industries. Along with neighbouring Abu Dhabi, the emirate has played a key role in the UAE’s steadily improving food security in recent years, despite a wide range of challenges. Indeed, the UAE – an arid country with little cultivable land and long-term water challenges – is perhaps an unlikely agro-industrial powerhouse.…