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Chapter Nine

The question of whether the general public of the entire UAE
should be entitled to have a say in the manner of exploitation of the
petroleum resources, the role of national oil companies, and the
channelling of payments for oil liftings, was always in a few people’s
minds but was first voiced aloud only during the constitutional crisis
of Spring 1979.
Wealth derived from sources other than oil has also been a cause
of controversy within the Federation because the individual Emir­
ates invariably put the maximum possible exploitation of all
opportunities, which offer themselves within their own boundaries,
before considering the common good of the UAE. The first attempt, in
1977, at accumulating a consolidated account of government finan­
ces encompassing federal accounts as well as those of Abu Dhabi,
Dubai, Sharjah and Ra's al Khaimah,152 demonstrates that some 15
per cent of the revenues in the general public sector came in 1978
from sources other than oil.153 Much of the additional revenue was in
fact capital which the individual Emirates’ governments received as
grants or borrowed from local and foreign banks. Of this money little
was channelled into community projects and services, since both
were by then to a large extent provided by the federal administration.
These funds were used for projects such as the Emirates’ airports,
harbours, tourist facilities and government-initialed commercial and
industrial projects such as hotels, the dry dock in Dubai, other repair
docks, and industrial ventures of a wide variety.
From the 1960s onwards growth has fed on growth, even
demonstrating a geographical pattern. Before Dubai exported oil it
benefited substantially from Abu Dhabi’s oil boom by serving as an
entrepot trader and a station for many oil-industry related com­
panies; when Dubai started to export oil, continuing to cultivate its
other commercial opportunities, Sharjah too benefited from its
proximity to this growth economy; now *Ajman and Umm al Qaiwain
house some of the expatriate population from both states. Ra’s al
Khaimah still hopes to find oil and meanwhile finances its own very
much smaller growth with grants from Abu Dhabi and abroad and
loans from local and foreign banks, who all appear to consider Abu
Dhabi oil as the ultimate security for such loans.
Economic expansion in varying degrees throughout all the seven
Emirates, not least on the east coast, has become an accustomed
pattern into which industrialisation filled well. Industrialisation
was considered the national priority both at federal and at local
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