Sport, music and cinema
Music and cinema
Because of the large Asian and Western contingents in Dubai, both Bollywood and Hollywood movies are popular and there are many modern, air-conditioned cinemas to choose from. The city also hosts the annual Dubai International Film Festival, which attracts celebrities from around the globe.
Dubai also has a lively music scene, with artists from [...]
GDP, import, export and oil bullets
Here are seven statistical factoids relating to import, export, oil and GDP :
Dubai’s gross domestic product as of 2005 was 37 billion US dollars.
Although Dubai’s economy was built on oil revenues, oil and natural gas now account for less than six percent of this figure.
It is predicted that Dubai’s oil reserves will be exhausted in [...]
Free zones and trade
Due to its location, Dubai was traditionally a convenient place for business to bridge the gap between East and West and it continued to be an important trade route in the 1970s and 1980s.
Dubai has a free trade in gold and until the 1990s was used as a base for smuggling gold ingots into India, [...]
A brief history of Dubai’s economy up to 1979
Dubai’s close proximity to India made it an important trading location and it was already known in Europe from the sixteenth century for its pearling industry, but it was in the nineteenth century when the emir lowered trade taxes to lure foreign traders from neighbouring states that Dubai really began to grow in prominence.
The early [...]
Dubai in the twentieth century
Dubai’s proximity to India made it an important port of call for foreign tradesmen, mainly Indian, many of whom eventually settled in the town.
Until the 1930s Dubai was known for its pearl exports, but the First World War and then the Great Depression damaged the industry irreparably resulting in a mass exodus to other parts [...]