Good Tidings

So the night before I am scheduled to fly back to Abu Dhabi, I decide to indulge in an all night internet rendezvous with er.. the high speed internet of my Singaporean nest. Kudos to the government for making Singapore broadband capital of Asia.

Anyways, deep into the latest Heroes episode online, I decide to surf around again and the latest Yahoo news buzzed up.. Dubai is not going to pay its debts!! Stock Markets are crashing!! Dubai is Broke!!

Ok, the construction industry guys in the UAE have known this all along, that contractors are not getting paid. Now its official.

I took a look at the Lian He Zao Bao (aka Chinese Straits Times of Singapore) the next morning and figures starting coming in... like Dubai World owes 50 odd billion dollars in debt, the whole of Dubai owes 80 billion, and Dubai was only able to secure a 5 billion loan from Abu Dhabi out of the 20 billion they wanted. And more about the lack of transparency of commerce in Dubai, and the fact that property prices fell by 50 % since last year..

Well with all this doom and gloom, I am glad W works in Abu Dhabi now..

So up I go onto my flight and arrived in Abu Dhabi in the evening. W and I went out for dinner at a nice Indian restaurant, we flipped though some newspapers and guess what the headlines of Gulf News were?

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It's been fun. Foreign news sources are readily available here, and a few days later, letters start streaming into the Financial Times (the writers with Arab sounding names) complaining about bias reporting from the western media on the state of Dubai's economy. And as stock markets recover, the local papers see a sign of renewed confidence in the potential of Dubai.

The UAE Minister of Economy is "surprised" at the global reaction to the re-structuring announcment, and debt restructuring (whatever that means) is absolutely normal in global business. The 5 billion bond was a great success and reflected the transparency of business transactions here. And indeed, the 4% interest is quite attractive.. (assuming that this is not going to get restructured as well)

Anyways, good news for the expat populations is that rent in Dubai is going down down down. Now if only I can talk W into driving 3 hours a day to live in Dubai and work in Abu Dhabi...