Page 450 - Ministry of Economy - December 2017

12/25/2017 Challenges may come, but UAE's ready for it | ZAWYA UAE Edition
The World Bank official, however stressed the need for the private sector to drive most of
the economic growth, and private-public-partnership models will be very important in

securing that. He believes that the privatisation drive will help prop up the capital markets.

The Washington-based IMF has projected a 1.3 per cent growth in UAE's real GDP in

2017, which it expects to surge to 3.4 per cent in 2018. While consumer price inflation in
the UAE will edge up slightly from 2.1 per cent in 2017 to 2.9 per cent in 2018, the UAE will

record current account balance at 2.1 per cent this year and next, the IMF said.

According to the UAE Vision 2021 plan, the creation and maintaining of a sustainable and

diversified economy is a key component of future planning, and progress has continued to
be made towards that objective.

The intention is that, by 2021, the UAE will have an economy that is flexible in adopting
new economic models and that is able to capitalise on global economic partnerships to

guarantee long-term prosperity for current and future generations of Emiratis.

Developing a 'competitive knowledge economy' is one of the pillars of the UAE National

Agenda in line with Vision 2021. According to an official report by the Ministry of Economy,
the government has continued in 2017 to focus on the UAE becoming the economic,

tourist and commercial capital for more than two billion people. To achieve this, the
government has set 12 key performance indicators: non-oil real GDP growth; gross

national income per capita; net inflow of foreign direct investment as a percentage of GDP;
global competitiveness index; share of UAE nationals in the workforce; ease of doing

business index; Emiratisation rate in the private sector; the contribution by small and
medium enterprises to non-oil GDP; global entrepreneurship and development index;

global innovation index, share of 'knowledge workers' in the labour force; and research and
development expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

Effective October 1, 2017, the UAE marked the beginning of a new era in its history, as it
started implementing excise tax, exactly three months ahead of the launch of value added

tax, another landmark region-wide tax initiative. Initial estimates suggest that the tax will
generate up to around Dh7 billion in annual revenues for the federal budget.

https://www.zawya.com/uae/en/story/Challenges_may_come_but_UAEs_ready_for_it-SNG_104779608/ 4/5