1. Intuit Management Consultancy
www.intuitconsultancy.com
Enterprises are buoyant over outlook for Dubai
According to the recent survey conducted by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, it
is found that 73 per cent of its 150,000 members - 95 per cent of which are SMEs - expected
business to stay the same or improve in the third quarter.
The SMEs are more optimistic than larger businesses, with 27 per cent expecting an
improvement, compared with 21 per cent of the bigger players. The exports in the seven months
until the end of July had risen 7 per cent compared with the same period a year ago and the
property market had grown at a double-digit pace so far this year.
A total of 8,000 companies also joined the chamber in the first half of this year compared to
7,000 new members in the January-July period of 2012 which suggests that more start-ups
were being created. The Chamber expects as many as 12,000 new members by the end of the
year.
The two reasons SMEs being optimistic are: Dubai's bid for the World Expo 2020 and the UAE's
goal of becoming the global centre for Islamic finance.
Dubai is considered a front-runner in the bidding for the expo. Opportunities will also arise for
SMEs as the UAE pushes to become the world centre of Islamic finance. The chamber
announced last week that it would hold a Global Islamic Economy Summit in November. SME
development is one of six areas of the $4 trillion Islamic economy that the summit will address.
While the costs of starting a business in Dubai were relatively low, businesses still had
difficulties in accessing financing. Currently, less than 5 per cent of bank lending in the UAE
goes to the SME sector even though it contributes at least 30 to 35 per cent of the country's
overall GDP.
The majority of banks consulted by a task force on SME financing convened last year said they
would like to increase lending to SMEs to 15 per cent but often SMEs were not able to provide
the financial statements they required. The chamber is helping to address this partly through its
Tejar Dubai scheme announced in May.