For Dubai’s expats, the grass is not always greener on the other side

For those accustomed to the litany of worrying news about the economy in Dubai, last week’s Emirates NBD research into the performance of the private sector came as a bit of a surprise. The lender’s Dubai Economy Tracker for July showed that overall conditions are improving at their fastest rate since March last year, with a strong performance from the wholesale and retail sector underpinned by holiday spending over Eid.

There are, of course, some that would question the veracity of economic data provided by the city’s largest bank, 65 percent of which is owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD). But it was just a couple of months ago that the same index was reporting a painful decline in overall business activity in the private sector — the first time this had happened since 2010. And not all the news from July was positive; the degree of optimism about the year ahead actually declined month on month in each of the three sub sectors covered by the research. As a foil to the Emirates NBD data, the quarterly Gulf Finance research into the health of the small business sector — which has been fairly damning recently — will be released shortly and should make for interesting reading.

Source