Dubai’s supporters

Dubai’s supporters

The emirate’s recent debt problems may have shaken the world, but Dubai will bounce back and will soon be back on its feet, say authorities.

December 10, 2009 2:00 by Aarti Nagraj

Even as Dubai’s stock markets are reaching new lows, government officials and other authorities claim that the worst is over and that the city will emerge out of the crisis. Abdul Rahman al-Saleh, director of Dubai’s Department of Finance, said in a speech on Thursday that Dubai would come out of the crisis as a “winner.”

The emirate’s problems caught the world’s attention after Dubai announced on November 25 that it would ask creditors for a six-month debt delay for government-owned conglomerate Dubai World and its property subsidiary, Nakheel. Global markets dropped drastically after the news, but according to al-Saleh, markets are getting back to normal.

“Of course, the reaction by the global markets was psychological, and came strongly. However, the reaction is now softening as investors became more informed about what happened,” he said.

He also accused the international media of creating “blind panic” about Dubai’s economic troubles, although he admitted the emirate wasn’t communicative: “Let me admit, in Dubai we are not good in publicizing what we are doing as much as we are in doing it,” he said.

The UAE President also said on Wednesday that the country has successfully overcome the global financial crisis.

“We have been able to contain the negative impacts of the (global economic) crisis and overcome many of its results and consequences,” Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan told Kuwait’s KUNA news agency.

“We have the ability and determination to continue to work in this direction… to remove all obstacles that prevent strong development,” he said.

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Tags: debt, Dubai, Dubai World, Financial Crisis, recover

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3 Comments

Falcon on December 13, 2009 7:42 pm

It is really difficult as a person who has grown up in a democracy to have to muzzle my responses to this crisis because this country doesn’t allow free debate or seem interested in what its local population think on most issues. I am not a National so I have no rights here. But, as someone who is directly affected by these recent actions – reported in full in the foreign press, to whom I have to say, ‘thank you’ because these media are the only ones who are telling it as it is – I would respectfully suggest that the gvt here drops the imposed rule of censorship in the media. If not directly imposed, self-censorship is wide spread in all media here. We who live in Dubai should be told what is happening by reporters who at the moment, it seems, are not allowed to do their job. We are the poorer for this and this leads to mistrust and ignorance. The gvt should be less secretive or at least listen to best PR advice. This has been a disaster in the wider world and a mystery to those of us fed nothing at all or….. just good news!!!
The Truth on December 14, 2009 10:58 am

we ain’t seen nothing yet
Financier on December 16, 2009 1:21 pm

It is hardly suprising that this happened , in fact it was long overdue, If one were to go by the the reports in the business pages of two very well known english dailies coming out of Dubai we can find a lot of inconsistencies. An uninformed person would not quite get to it but to a person with a financial back ground it would be pretty obvious , the policies and the various press releases that come out from the Central bank and its Chairman from time to time reads like a joke book. The rudiments of Global Financial Chain Management are totally missing , and even schoolchildren in my country would be able to say more sensible things.