Dubai and its Belgian residents

Dubai, the capital the Emirate of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, has turned from a small dusty dessert city in to a metropolitan city with a booming economy. This new prosperous nation attracts many foreign investors, companies and workers among whom several fellow-countrymen. Today only 15% of Dubai’s population are locals.

The economy of Dubai has changed a lot in the last 50 years. Some of there oil reserves were sold for petrodollars, but luckily these dollars weren’t spent on the Rolls Royce’s of the sheiks or on weapons for war-hungry regimes, the petrodollars were invested in ambitious developing projects and other long term investments. Currently revenues from petroleum and natural gas account for just 6% of the GDP.

Unlike some of its neighbours where the economy still is fully reliant on the oil industry, Dubai has a sustainable economy and Belgian companies are setting up branch stores in every part of this small kingdom. Belgian companies are also being contracted by the government to work on some of its most ambitious structures. The world famous Palm-Islands for example were constructed by the Belgian dredging company Jan de Nul.
We don’t only help making these wonders of engineering we are also living on them: over 100 Belgians have bought a house on one of the Palm-Islands and over a 1000 Belgians live in the city of Dubai.

This economic miracle does have a dark side though. The construction of some of its most ambitious structures would have been impossible without the heavy labour of the Pakistani, Indian and Philippine workers who work for next to nothing in inhumane conditions. But from an economic point of view you could only have respect for the achievements this country has realised in the last decades.

Sources: Several articles of Het Nieuwsblad en De Morgen

Felix Braeckman