UAE announces economic stimulus plan

Abu Dhabi and Dubai have both recently announced measures to boost economic growth and ease the cost of doing business in these Emirates.

Dubai 

His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum has announced a number of measures with the view of stimulating economic growth (notably in strategic sectors such as real estate and aviation) and facilitate doing business in Dubai, including the following:

• decrease the market fees imposed by the Dubai Municipality on commercial entities from 5% to 2.5%;

• stimulate the aviation industry by cancelling 19 fees relating to this industry and to aircraft landing permits;

• reduce costs with property registration by granting a 60-day grace period before issuing fines to real estate developers for late-payment of property registration fees, waiving the 4% delay fee imposed by the Dubai Land Department;

• halt the increase on tuition fees of all private schools in Dubai for the academic year 2018-2019;

• undertake measures to facilitate ownership by foreign citizens; and

• introduce ten year visas.

Abu Dhabi

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has announced a Dh 50 billion (fifty billion Dhirams) stimulus program. This program involves a number of initiatives from which we stress the following:

• creation of 10,000 jobs for Emiratis in the public and private sectors within a 5 years period;

• extend the issuance of dual licenses for Abu Dhabi free zone companies so that these companies may operate outside the free zone and tender on government contracts;

• decrease business costs for new licenses by eliminating the need for a physical office/workplace license for two years and allowing permanent home licenses;

• implement instant licensing systems in most commercial license types;

• ensure the payment of contracts for suppliers from private sectors are made in a timely manner;

• create a committee under the scope of the Executive Committee and Department of Finance to supervise payments and review all fines for the healthcare and education sectors;

• implement a Abu Dhabi Accelerated Development Program to attract and support value-added investments and technologies;

• conduct review of building regulations for infrastructure, residential properties, commercial and industrial sectors with the view of decreasing costs in these sectors;

• encourage local production and support SMEs in order to improve competitiveness of these companies both locally and in the middle eastern region;

• develop ecotourism and create camping villages.