Economy Of Dubay

Economy of Dubai

The economy of Dubai was valued at US$ 46 billion as of 2006. Dubai's gross domestic product as of 2008 was US $82.11 billion. The Great Recession slowed the construction boom.

The International Herald Tribune has described it as "centrally-planned free-market capitalism." Although Dubai's economy was built on the back of the oil industry,[4] revenue from petroleum and natural gas currently account for less than 6% of the emirate's gross domestic product. Dubai became important ports of call for Western manufacturers. Most of the new city's banking and financial centres were headquartered in the port area. Dubai maintained its importance as a trade route through the 1970s and 1980s. The city of Dubai has a free trade in gold and until the 1990s was the hub of a "brisk smuggling trade" of gold ingots to India, where gold import was restricted.

Today, Dubai has focused its economy on tourism by building hotels and developing real estate. Port (Jebel Ali, constructed in the 1970s, has the largest man-made harbor in the world), but is also increasingly developing as a hub for service industries such as IT and finance, with the new Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Emirates Airline was founded by the government in 1985 and is still state-owned; based at Dubai International Airport, it carried over 28 million passengers in fiscal year 2006 and 24 million the year before.

...