* Fiscal committee head says budget controls improved
* Government sees faster economic growth this year
* Core forecast is for 4.1 pct growth
* Tourism, trade, manufacturing seen strong
* Outlook still weak for real estate sector
By Martina Fuchs and Praveen Menon
DUBAI, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Dubai will aim for economic
growth of 4.5 percent this year, up from an estimated expansion
of more than 3 percent in 2011, a senior economic official said
on Wednesday.
“The GDP of Dubai has witnessed growth of 2.5 percent in
2010 and it is expected to increase over 3 percent in the year
2011,” Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, chairman of the Dubai
Supreme Fiscal Committee, said during a presentation on the
emirate’s economic outlook.
“And we hope in this year we will see more and can get to
4.5 percent.”
Dubai, much more dependent on non-oil trade than the rest of
the United Arab Emirates, accounts for about 30 percent of the
country’s gross domestic product. Analysts polled by Reuters in
December forecast the overall UAE economy would grow 3.1 percent
this year after an estimated 3.9 percent in 2011.
Sheikh Ahmed did not detail how Dubai aimed to reach 4.5
percent growth, but said the financial sector had remained
strong despite challenges over the past few years, which
included the global financial crisis and a corporate debt crisis
in Dubai which required a bailout from neighbouring Abu Dhabi.
Earlier on Wednesday Emirates NBD, Dubai’s largest
bank, posted a 62 percent fall in its fourth-quarter net profit
as it made provisions against possible losses on loans to
government-linked companies, many of them involved in the
struggling real estate sector.
“The financial management of the Dubai government has taken
policies that reduced expenses and put many controls on our
budget,” Sheikh Ahmed said.
Mohammad Lahouel, chief economist at Dubai’s Department of
Economic Development, told the same conference that the
department expected economic growth of around 4.1 percent in
2012, after expansion of roughly 3 percent in 2011.
“We are expecting a growth rate of 4.1 percent in 2012. It
is going to be driven by the respective sectors; tourism is
going to continue to grow at a fast rate of 6 percent, trade at
about 6 percent, manufacturing is going to be resilient at about
6 percent, and transportation,” he said.
“This rate will be achieved in spite of the continuous
decline in the real estate sector.”
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