Dubai is entering a new era

In African jungles, whenever a deer awakes in the morning it knows it has to run faster than a lion to avoid being caught and killed. The lion, on the other hand, wakes up with the intention to run faster than the deer, to catch it and get its meal for the day.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, says: "Whether you are a deer or a lion, you have to run fast to survive."

In the past 20 years, running fast has been the driving force behind the prosperity of Dubai. Yet the race of Dubai will continue to be the power that is moving the emirate forward under the leadership of Shaikh Mohammad.

However, running aimlessly has never been the motivation behind Dubai. Its unmistakable success in every aspect of development has been achieved because those people who are responsible for driving set the right priorities in proper order.

Shaikh Mohammad once said, "If a cart is politics and a horse is the economy then we have to put the horse before the cart and not the other way around."

Shaikh Mohammad is also on record as saying that the word "impossible" should not be in a leader's dictionary. "No matter how big the challenges, strong faith, determination and resolve will overcome them," he has said.

Since 1984 when the father of modern Dubai, Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum became ill, Shaikh Mohammad was involved in developing the present-day Dubai to what it now is. This was achieved in co-operation with his brothers, Shaikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, and Shaikh Ahmad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Chief of Dubai Police and General Security.

Shaikh Mohammad's influence is felt in every aspect of life in Dubai. It is evidence of the vision of the man who never ceases in his endeavours, even when he achieves his set target. This is because having attained one goal, he always sets a newer target to aim at, to maintain momentum of the race and keep runners at their maximum speed.

He has said: "Stagnation means regression, therefore a person should strive to develop his position. If you cannot, you should give up your place to others."

Also: "We have to make history and approach the future with steady steps, not wait for the future to come to us."

The launch of modern Dubai and the implementation of the new vision of its young leaders was marked in 1985 with the establishment of the first UAE national airline, Emirates. The project, the inspiration of Shaikh Mohammad, proved later to act as a vehicle that carries Dubai to a higher altitude.

New airline

It took analysts some time to figure out why the establishment of an airline was so important for the development of Dubai. Observers from the industry were sceptical about the chances of a new airline to succeed in a region hit by a dramatic decline in oil prices.

Yet the establishment of the national carrier was followed by the launch of a completely new industry: tourism. The concept of tourism was new to the lexicon of the region. At the early stage of the tourism promotion and programme, the development of the industry was quite difficult and required exciting work and huge investment, but this had never deterred Shaikh Mohammad from abandoning the idea. He would tell developers and investors in tourist projects that what you see of tourism is just the tip of the iceberg and Dubai will gain a resounding success in tourism.

Today, no one can argue the remarkable success that Dubai has achieved regionally and internationally in the field of tourism. Last year, nearly 5.5 million people visited Dubai, which is probably one of the highest per capita ratios in the world. The annual growth of the industry is 6 per cent, yet Shaikh Mohammad still considers it the tip of the iceberg, as he plans to triple the number of visitors within 10 years.

The Dubai Shopping Festival came in line with the concept of promoting Dubai as family destination and has become an independent success story over the past 10 years.

Dubai which never stagnates, moved to a completely new horizon with the inauguration of Dubai Internet City and the Dubai Media City. These two new concepts placed the emirate in the centre of interest of information technology and media industry from all over the world. The establishment of other specialised cities came as bonus following the sound success of the first two projects.

Preparing to enter the new millennium, Dubai invented a new investment concept at least new to people in this region. The emirate decided to develop new residential cities equipped with the best luxury services and offer the property on "freehold" terms, without restriction on the nationality of investors. This was a revolutionary concept in the region as it addressed the stability of expatriates living and working in the country. Soon afterwards, Dubai developed another new concept in the field of real-estate development.

Dubai came with an unprecedented scheme, reclaiming land from the sea and development to become world wonders. The Palm Islands in Jumeirah, Jebel Ali and Deira are being developed, along with the World and the Dubai Water Front, to become the new symbols of Dubai and the biggest man-made islands in the world.

Government plans

In 2005, the Dubai government took its first steps abroad to invest in real estate projects in Syria, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and more recently in the Dh100 billion Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia. Dubai has also purchased property in the US as part of government plans to expand into other international markets.

These success stories could not have happened without proper plans and the sincere hard work of all parties involved. However, Shaikh Mohammad's major success is in building a community of young local men and women who will be charged with leading the new projects based on modern knowledge and experiences.

The success of Dubai in the past two decades can be attributed to the way Shaikh Mohammad manages the executive system in the emirate. He has converted the government from a traditional Third World government into a shareholding giant corporate that functions according to business norms.

The most successful scheme that helped Dubai reach what it has accomplished so far is in offering every resident in the emirate the right to become one of its shareholders. However, the transformation of Dubai into a corporate-type business was done with special care to preserve its cultural traditions and its special identity while striving to achieve client satisfaction like any other consumer business.

Shaikh Mohammad once said the best measure of a government's success is the satisfaction of those who deal with it. In one of his meetings with heads of public departments and government employees he said a job in the government is not just a way of making a living; it is a means to allow citizens to contribute to the growth of their country. He is sure that economic and political progress cannot be achieved without transforming the image and the duty of the government to adhere to the growth and satisfaction of its citizens.

Shaikh Mohammad manages to instil openness, tolerance and the ability to envision the future needs of residents.

The great transformation of Dubai in the 21st century was in the demographic cross section and the distribution of wealth. Residents became owners of some kind of shares in the profitable entity of the emirate regardless of their races, religions, colours and nationalities. Some have acquired shares in the Dubai Financial Market, others have bought freehold property, while some opted to have their own businesses in one of the specialised free zones. The big family businesses became second in terms of wealth and impact compared with giant companies with large base of shareholders. That is an important transformation that Dubai has witnessed.

Dubai is entering a new era. An era to build on the successes it has achieved in the past 20 years, while moving ahead at "lion's speed to catch up the deer of prosperity and development".

The greatest challenge the lion of Dubai will face in the years to come is how to retain Dubai's humanity while chasing the deer. But nothing suggests that Dubai will not be able to win this challenge.