Dubai: Almost all Dubai residents believe the emirate deserves to win the right to host the World Expo 2020, a government-hosted survey revealed on Sunday.
Results of the ‘We Deserve It’ survey by Dubai Statistics Centre said 99.57 per cent of Emirati respondents believe that Dubai is a strong candidate city to host the event, with 99.41 per cent supporting the bid. Non-Emirati residents displayed similar opinions. Some 99.12 per cent of them said they believe Dubai is a strong contender and 98.67 per cent of them support the bid.
The centre surveyed 64,802 respondents over a 10-day period this month to measure community awareness and support, in coordination with the higher committee of Dubai’s Expo 2020 Bid. More than half of the respondents were Emiratis while the rest represented expatriates.
Reem Al Hashemi, UAE Minister of State and the committee’s managing director, said the survey results are encouraging.
“It is sincerely gratifying to learn that the data reinforces the outpouring of support we’ve seen from across the UAE, and indeed, the world,” Al Hashemi said. “As the Dubai Statistics Centre’s campaign ‘We Deserve It’ has proven, an overwhelming majority of the population surveyed believes that we do indeed deserve to host Expo 2020 in Dubai.
“Inshallah, we hope the member nations of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) agree on Wednesday.”
The 168 member nations of the BIE will cast their votes on Wednesday, November 27 to decide which candidate city will win the bid to host the Expo. Other candidate cities are Brazil’s Sao Paulo, Turkey’s Izmir and Russia’s Yekaterinburg.
