Dubai sets record spending target for 2020

Dubai sets record spending target for 2020
December 29, 2019, 1:37 pm

The Dubai government will spend a record 66.4 billion dirhams ($18.08 billion) in 2020 as it looks to boost its economy and support the Expo 2020 event, the emirate said in a statement on Sunday.

Dubai also adopted a three-year budget cycle from 2020 to 2022, with a total expenditure of 196 billion dirhams ($53 billion), the statement said.

The Gulf hub, which is home to the world's tallest skyscraper, Burj Khalifa, expects public revenues to reach 64 billion dirhams ($17.4 billion) in 2020, an increase of 25 percent year-on-year.

“This comes as part of supporting the Dubai Plan 2021 and the Expo 2020 Dubai, as well as moving forward in support of the emirate’s macro economy,” Abdulrahman Saleh Al Saleh, Director General of the Department of finance (DOF) said in a statement.

The figure for 2020 marks an increase over the 56.8 billion dirhams ($15.5 billion) in capital expenditure under the 2019 budget.

The government expects the global trade exhibition to generate billions of dirhams for the United Arab Emirates’ economy as it struggles with sluggish rates of growth amid a real estate slump, which has sent property prices to record lows.

The Expo will be held between October 2020 and April 2021.

Official figures released on Saturday showed that Dubai’s external trade rose 6 percent to 1.02 trillion dirhams ($277.74 billion) in the first nine month of 2019.

Authorities reported that exports rose 23 percent to 118 billion dirhams, re-exports increased 4 percent to 312 billion dirhams, and imports rose 3 percent to 589 billion dirhams.

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