Dubai is world's fifth fastest growing city economy

Dubai has been ranked among the top 10 cities that are powering economic growth within their nations, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.

The report by the leading American think tank has ranked Dubai fifth worldwide for 2014, up from 18th position in the previous year.

The report said Dubai's growth was boosted by a 4.7 per cent annual rise in employment.

The emirate also recorded the fastest growth relative to its national economy with a 4.5 per cent rise in gross domestic product, or GDP, per capita, versus 1.6 per cent growth for the UAE as a whole.

Overall, the report found that economic activity and growth in 2014 remained disproportionately concentrated in the world's major metropolitan areas.

The 300 largest metropolitan economies housed 20 per cent of both the world's population and its employment.

The report found that developing metropolitan economies were growing much faster than their more developed peers.

According to the Washington-based Brookings Institution's Global Metro Monitor, "no metropolitan area grew faster relative to its national economy than Dubai, where the business and financial services sector helped drive 4.5 per cent growth in GDP per capita."

"The most populous city in the UAE, Dubai is a global hub for transportation, tourism, trade and professional services," the report elaborates.

"Thanks to an ambitious strategy to diversify its economy, Dubai no longer relies on commodities to power its economic growth, and today the service industry accounts for more than 70 per cent of total GDP," it highlights.

These findings come from a report by the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Programme, released as a part of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase.

Overall, Dubai is ranked number five among the list of elite global metropolitan cities that are pushing the boundaries of the country's economic growth.

Besides the top-ranked Macau, Dubai was the only developed economy city to feature in the Top 20 fastest growing metros, with GCC peer Riyadh ranked at number 25 on the list.

This year's Global Metro Monitor, the fourth edition of the report, analyses 2013-14 data on the performance of the world's 300 largest metropolitan areas based on their annualised growth rates of GDP per capita and employment.

The Monitor combines these two key economic indicators into an economic performance index on which the 300 metro areas are ranked for 2014.

The report found that while developing metropolitan areas still lead the world on economic growth, developed metro areas from the US and the UK registered significant improvements in 2014.

Macau, China was the world's top-performing metro area in 2014, followed by the Turkish cities of Izmir (2), Istanbul (3) and Bursa (4). Dubai is ranked at number five, ahead of Chinese cities of Kunming (6), Hangzhou (7) and Xiamen (8).

The report said that the 300 largest metropolitan economies are home to 20 per cent of the world's population and jobs, but account for almost half of global GDP, underscoring that the global economy is truly a metro economy.
Source: Khaleej Times