Abu Dhabi: Dubai managed to catch up with higher labour productivity levels in Singapore by 2007 in diverse sectors such as retail and wholesale trade, construction, transport and communications, and the financial sector, according to experts of the Economic Policy and Research Centre (EPRC), the operational arm of the Secretariat General of the Dubai Economic Council.
"The growth in manufacturing, though vigorous, has not been enough to close the gap with Sing-apore and there remains space for future improvement in Dubai.
"The more backward sector seems to be that of social and personal services," the ERPC experts said in a study, the findings of which were released yesterday.
According to the study, Dubai's economy underwent extraordinary expansion in the past 35 years. Between 1975 and 2008, its output expanded by a factor of 11 in real terms.
"It can be seen, nevertheless, that the pace of econ-omic growth has not been smooth: while annual GDP [gross domestic product] growth was sustained in the 1975-1990 period at around six per cent, it was in the last 15 years that Dubai's GDP grew at an extraordinary pace by international standards: almost nine per cent per year.
"If one only focuses on the period 2000-2008, annual growth rates have been on average above ten per cent," it added.
"Few countries in the world have been able to sustain such extraordinary pace of growth for an extended period of time," the study noted.
Shared view
The study's methodology is based on the comparison between Dubai and similar city economies such as Hong Kong and Singapore. according to the study, these two economies share Dubai's view of becoming an international economic and financial hub, enjoy a spectacular geographical location alongside trade routes and powerful neighbours, and are relatively poorly endowed in terms of territory and natural resources on which to base economic development.
These three economies share, in addition, a common experience of being very open economies that benefited from substantial financial resources and massive labour inflows.
The study collected data value added in production for 13 sectors of the economy of Dubai.
These were agriculture; oil, mining and quarrying; manufacturing; electricity, water and gas; construction; trade; restaurants and hotels; transport, storage and communication; real estate; social and personal services; the financial corporation sectors; government services sector; and domestic services of households.
