Page 389 - Ministry of Economy - December 2017

12/25/2017 UAE - economic, tourist and commercial capital of 2 billion people -
ABU DHABI 2 December 2017: During the course of the last year, the
economy of the United Arab Emirates has continued to make steady
progress, despite predictions of a slowdown in economic growth
elsewhere in the region.

According to the UAE Vision 2021 plan, the creation and maintaining
of a sustainable and diversi ed 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 exible 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
UAE National Agenda in line with Vision 2021.

According to an o cial 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 (GNI) per
capita, Net In ow 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,
SME’s, to non-oil GDP, Global Entrepreneurship and Development
Index (GEDI), Global Innovation Index, Share of ‘knowledge workers’
in the labour force, and Research and Development expenditure as a
percentage of GDP.

Resilient

The UAE economy has been resilient despite the impact of uctuating
oil prices as it has bene ted from a diversi ed economy, excellent
infrastructure, political stability and ample foreign assets, according
to the Institute of International Finance, IIF.

“Sentiment has improved with rmer oil prices. Non-oil activity has
picked up modestly in 2017 as scal drag eases and consumption
spending rises in the second half of 2017, ahead of the introduction
of value-added tax, VAT, in 2018,” according to Garbis Iradian, Chief
Economist Africa Middle East, IIF.

Recently-published gures in the Emirates NDB Purchasing
Managers’ Index, PMI, increased from 55.1 in September 2017 to 55.9

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