Project services to touch $4tr by 2028

Dubai: The GCC project services industry has reached $2 trillion and is expected to hit $4 trillion in the next 20 years, industry projections show.

Gulf project spending in the public and private sectors is shifting from construction to services, Edmund O'Sullivan, chairman of Middle East Business Intelligence (MEED) events, said at a conference yesterday.

Logistics

Half of that will be in logistics, he said. About 25 per cent of the spending will go to worker income. The numbers of workers are also expected to grow rapidly. "Presently, there are at least four to five million people working in the project industry, in the full value chain," said O'Sullivan.

This figure is expected to double in the coming years. "Arabtech [a construction company] has 40,000 workers, and is expecting to double them in five years," he said.

Engineering firms have similar expectations.

The project market will involve about 25 million people over the next 20 years.

"This is a genuine international movement of people, on an unprecedented scale," said O'Sullivan.

"Never before have so many people left their home country for another country in search of work," he said.

The workforce will include architects, engineers, logistics providers, warehouse people and building material workers.

Fees

"If this works, logistics will get at least $75 billion in fees," O'Sullivan added.

As the workers in the industry are from developing countries in South and South-East Asia, much of the money will be going into them.

"Around $300 billion will be remitted to the latent resource countries of the Indian sub-continent," O'Sullivan said.