Dubai's hunt for its buried treasure continues

Dubai’s hunt for its buried treasure continues

As Dubai does some serious housekeeping…there’s got to be some seriously review and fortification of the current processes for money lending and, yes, even traffic fines.

December 13, 2011 3:08 by p.deleon

What?! AED922 million in traffic fines from drivers who haven’t paid since 2009?!

Forget the figure. We’re sure this is a small amount of money compared to the millions from drivers who do pay their dues every year when they have to register their cars. What boggles our mind here at Kipp is the point that in theory you can’t renew your car registration if you haven’t paid your fines.

So were the drivers just not registering their cars at all? And kept on driving recklessly on the roads racking up fine after fine for two years? Or were these fines just not put into the system because some of the data was unclear or mishandled?

Again, how do you get to this point?

One would suppose the same way that Emirati debt that was perhaps left unchecked and skyrocketed to an astronomical AED48 billion in six years.

Now, as Dubai does some serious housekeeping and no doubt a more eagle eye view of its accounts, there’s got to be some seriously review and fortification of the current processes for money lending and, yes, even traffic fines.

The central bank is already putting new rules in place, with the loan regulations approved early this year. And other sectors, like the traffic department, we suspect will have to follow suit.

We’d keep an eye in new ‘fees’, as well if we were you. But never tax of course. The UAE will remain tax-free, at least for the time being that VAT isn’t here yet.

There will always be loopholes to a system. Nothing is perfect, after all. So people will always find ways get around them. But we’re pretty sure that it will become pretty difficult to do it, at least for some of us from now on.