Business | Economy
Portal was key to raising Dubai's rank in business survey
Dubai Trade, an online service provider and business facilitator for DP World, Dubai Customs and Jebel Ali Free Zone Auth-ority (Jafza), helped boost the UAE's ranking in the Ease of Doing Business report by 22 positions.
- By Nadia Saleem, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:13 October 3, 2008
Dubai: Dubai Trade, an online service provider and business facilitator for DP World, Dubai Customs and Jebel Ali Free Zone Auth-ority (Jafza), helped boost the UAE's ranking in the Ease of Doing Business report by 22 positions.
The UAE's international ranking in the World Bank's Doing Business report 2008, placed the UAE at 68th. This has changed to 46 for the 2009 report.
For the cross-border activities category in the report, the UAE's rank jumped from 24 in 2008 to 14 for 2009.
Inaccurate
"The revised ranking adds exceptional value to the already established position of the UAE as a business hub. Dubai, being the major player in this particular area and main contributor to this ranking, will undoubtedly see more interest from businesses," Mahmoud Al Bastaki, dir-ector of Dubai Trade said to Gulf News.
In July, Dubai Trade told Gulf News that the UAE's ranking for cross-border activities was inaccurate and that they had approached the World Bank to revise its figures.
The World Bank said that the data provided by Dubai Trade was a significant factor in the UAE's improved ranking.
The portal provided the World Bank with the correct data, which showed that the actual time, cost and documents required by customers for cross-border activity were much less than what the bank had thought.
"Our report helped us not only to review current trade procedures constructively but also plan solutions and simplify process systems to further improve the UAE's standing in the next report," Al Bastaki said.
The Doing Business report, undertaken annually by the World Bank, provides evaluations of business regulations and their enforcement in 181 econ-omies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.
Reality
On Dubai Trade's role in improving the UAE's ranking, Al Bastaki said: "Dubai Trade, being the electronic platform dedicated to facilitating trade and logistics in and through Dubai, plays a very effective role in enhancing these indicators by transforming the typical counter-based process to e-services, thus reducing the time and cost significantly, greatly eliminating the need for physical documents."
Al Bastaki added that his organisation is working to bring the UAE's ranking to the top of the list of contenders and that they can see the "goal becoming a reality sooner than anyone expects".
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