DUBAI: Dubai Multi Comoodities Centre (DMCC) saw a 500 per cent increase in the value of murahaba transactions, a Sharia-compliant line of credit, last year, rising from Dh11.6 billion in 2015 to Dh58.4 billion in 2016.
Over the same period, the number of companies registered at the DMCC Free Zone rose from 11,588 to 13,176, according to the organisation’s annual report, published on Thursday.
DMCC executive chairman Ahmad Bin Sulayem said the free zone was registering seven new companies a day.
DMCC is also exploring new commodities to add to its trade clusters, and looking at how to improve trade in its current line-up.
“To put it simply, if a structured market doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, we create it. If it does exist, we better it,” DMCC CEO Gautam Sashittal said in an interview at DMCC’s offices in Almas Tower, Jumeirah Lakes Towers.
Sashittal said several commodity sectors — including diamonds, precious metals and tea — grew last year, despite a global slowdown in trade.
“We are seeing a lot more south-south trade,” he said, “It’s growing quite substantially, and Dubai, DMCC, is well positioned to take advantage of that” due to its proximity to producing areas such as Africa and India, and its links to the New Silk Road to China. “Trade will always happen,” he added.
Bin Sulayem said the immediate focus for this year would be the creation of a coffee centre, along the lines of DMCC’s Tea Centre, which saw 41.6 million kilogrammes of tea pass through it last year, and DMCC announced the launch of its own tea brand, Shay Dubai, due to be rolled out this year.
“Today we take pride in the fact that Dubai is the largest re-exporter of tea,” Bin Sulayem said. “From not being a relevant player in the tea business to this, myself and the team, we take pride in that.”
“What we’re proud of today, is we are the number one free zone in the world,” Shashittal said. “The thing about this growth in the free zone is we don’t focus only on commodity sectors. We don’t focus only on large corporates.
“What we have here is truly an ecosystem of large corporates, small companies, start-ups, tech incubators. trading arcades. You’ve got business centres — you’ve got the entire ecosystem there, it sort of grows on itself, feeds on itself. And we’ve created certain industry clusters — the energy cluster, the diamond cluster, the precious metals cluster — all of which really add to the vibrancy of the free zone.”
Looking to the future, Sashittal highlighted the new smart business district to be built around the commercial supertall Burj 2020 tower. “When we’re looking at a smart district, we’re looking at three elements to it. We look at connectivity — whether that’s physical or virtual — we looking at sustainability, the energy footprint, and thirdly we look at how we can actually create a community that’s proud of itself, that grows, that creates real asset value, that creates value to the community and to Dubai.”
He added, “What does a business want? A business wants to be able to establish itself in the shortest space of time, to put people in chairs and stuff, doing business. That is ultimately the focus of everything we do. It’s not just about licensing and visa, it’s about making things easier for them — finding real estate, insurance services, employment services.”
