Gilbert Harding. I Am Not Dead

I was struck by what I thought was just plain over indulgence and quite barmy thinking when I first visited Dubai a couple of years ago. That didn’t change much when we went back there last year.
I just could not figure out where they expected all the people to come from that would fill all the hotel rooms, apartment blocks, villas and offices that were being built with, it must be said, impressive speed.

The crazyness of the traffic jams on Sheik Zaeed Road, a multi lane super highway that runs the length of Dubai from the old city up to and beyond the Marina complex to the site of the new, under construction, airport. It’s actually one of the few roads in Dubai that has a name.
The Burj Dubai, the worlds tallest building. Why bother?
The Atlantis Hotel sitting out on a man made sandbank which, according to some reports, is already sinking, and so expensive to even walk into for a cup of coffee. What were they thinking?
The taxi drivers who generally speaking don’t speak much English and have no idea where you want to go anyway if it’s not a famous landmark.
And the sewage system. Well actually more the lack of a proper sewage system for all the new buildings that have shot up in last few years.
Dubai trucks it’s sewage out of the city to the one and only sewage farm on the outskirts of town in a huge fleet of tankers.
When we were there last year there was a huge stink over the tanker drivers, fed up with up 15 hours queuing in the boiling desert heat to dump their loads, driving out to a deserted beach and off loading it there. Beaches were closed as a result.

These are just a few of the examples of why in my opinion they got it all arse about face.
The banking system is a farce even against western standards, the telephone system is creaking at the seams and very expensive. The internet is ADSL, very expensive and slow even by UK standards. Mobile coverage is all there but overloaded. Calls generally drop within a few seconds.
And all this in a place that has expectations of becoming not only the major tourist destination in the Middle East, but also the economic and business hub of the region.

There is much work to do if they wish to achieve this.

When you see it in the flesh it’s like a cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland, but both those places are built better and actually work.

On the plus side the food is good and relatively cheap.

So what’s all this got to do with us? Quite a lot actually. Dubai has no real money of its own, most of what you see there is financed by debt, much of it from Abu Dhabi.
Both of these Emirates own considerable portfolios of property overseas. Abu Dhabi owns a considerable amount of Jolly Old England for a start.
The worry is that in order to save Dubai they will have “bring the money home” by offloading these investments.

What that will do to an already depressed world market is what makes these ‘Interesting Times’.

Tags: Abu Dhabi, debt, Dubai, overseas investments

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 11:49 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.