UAE falls four ranks in World Bank study

Dubai: The UAE's position in the World Bank's Doing Business fell four ranks to 24th this year from 20th last year, causing concern in the business community.

"According to the World Bank study, Singapore ranks number one, while the UAE ranks number 24 out of 178 economies. For the UAE, this is four ranks down from 2007. As Dubai is the commercial hub of the UAE, this is a major area of concern for us, and we are interested in learning from the business community's areas of expertise on ways to improve trade in Dubai," said Hamad Bu Amim, director-general of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry at a forum on Monday.

He said even though the chamber does not agree completely with the report and has a counter-argument, there is no harm in looking to ways to improve the ranking.

"We all know that the UAE is not a typical business environment and, therefore, the sample used in constructing the index in the World Bank study may not accurately reflect the true structure of the economy or the true ease of doing business in the country," he said.

"Closer inspection of the composition of these sub-indices reveals that streamlining administrative processes by simplifying procedures, providing one-stop shops, single window agencies and facilities online would help to improve the UAE's ratings and transparency of business processes," he added.

Dr. Belaid Rettab, senior executive director of the chamber, said the chamber has done some preliminary research which revealed that "the time it takes to process documents for imports and exports" was the biggest hurdle in doing business in Dubai.