The continued high level of foreign investment in Dubai is a powerful endorsement of business confidence in the city, which combines with welcome recognition of the enduring political stability of the UAE.
Even though difficult world economic conditions triggered an 11 per cent fall in the overall value of investment coming into Dubai, the emirate was still among the top 10 global cities for attracting investors, and was third behind London and Singapore for money going into new investment initiatives.
The important part of this continued high level of investment is that companies in the major industrial markets are confident that Dubai is an important centre from which to expand their strategic investments across the Middle East, Africa and south Asia (an area that contains a third of the world’s population, including some of the fastest-growing societies).
Commenting on the importance of this report, Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, said that it was important that the figure included a new wave of investment focusing on research, development and innovation centres for some of the world’s leading companies, as R&D investment had gone up from 1 per cent in 2015 to 5 per cent in 2016.
An important part of business confidence in Dubai is the combination of excellent infrastructure, a willingness by government authorities to make it easy to do business, and a focus on encouraging talent, innovation and new business models.
The Dubai government has been the active manager of combining all these investor-friendly activities as part of its strategic vision of building a new economy in the emirate. This attitude has been part of the Dubai spirit that goes back for decades, but its new focus on the latest technology is vital in capturing the interest of global leaders like Amazon and Tesla, who require a very high level of technology and reliability to be able to operate.
Such a high level of foreign investment is vital to the success of the Dubai Plan 2021 and the Dubai Industrial Strategy, both of which seek to expand the role in the emirate of high value-added businesses, in order to build global competitiveness and the sustainability of the Dubai economy. The results published in this annual FDI Monitor are an important affirmation that Dubai’s strategy is on track, which will help attract more global firms to the emirate.
