Dubai thrives for economic progress in the coming years, 2011 was the first step – Part 3

Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates the city and its state-controlled companies still face about $10.3 billion in debt repayments this year alone.

“There’s still a lot of debt overhang and corporate restructurings to be worked through,” said Khalid Howladar, a Dubai-based senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service. “Deferral of the problem has been one approach, which buys more time but still leaves a cloud of uncertainty over legacy issues that constrain confidence.”

The social unrest, the Middle East region and North African countries has assisted Dubai in its unique way. The political chaos and social uprising against the leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, and security forces quashed unrest in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, a record 51 million passengers passed through Dubai’s airport last year.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s approval of the expansion of the two airports in Dubai will certainly help in managing the growing crowd at the junctions. Prior to 2008, Dubai was the hub of air flights in the Asian region.

Tourism had been one of Dubai’s forte in the pre-2008 era, swaying construction companies to build state-of-the-art malls and skyscrapers like Burg Dubai and Burg Khalifa. However, the crisis spilled water over their effors to make the city a tourism hub.

In 2011, the state saw the trend coming back to its older routine. 9.3 million tourists visited Dubai last year, up 10 percent from 2010, pushing up hotel revenue by 20 percent. This also means that the buildings that were abandoned in the 2009 and 2010 will certainly start to get populated in the coming couple of years.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Mar 12 2012. Filed under Business, Middle East, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.