DUBAI, 30 August 2006 — The population of Dubai reached 1.24 million, according to a report released by the Dubai municipality’s Statistics Center. Dubai releases demographics information twice per year.
Of the total population, 73 percent or 911,000 are male and 27 percent or 330,000 are female due to the large representation of male foreign guest workers.
Results of a national census published at the end of July showed that the total UAE population had grown in a decade from 2.4 million to 4.1 million. Eighty percent of this figure comprises foreigners. The latest population figure includes 824,921 UAE citizens.
South Asians — mainly Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans — are estimated to make up about half of the expatriates in the UAE. The remaining foreign residents are from other Asian, Arab, Western and African nationalities.
According to Labor Ministry sources, Indian workers in the UAE represent about half of the private sector employees.
“In the first half of 2006, Indian nationals amounted to some 45 percent of foreign workers arriving in the UAE, increasing their number in the private sector to between 1.2 million and 1.3 million workers — or 50 percent of the total,” said the report.
Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals represented 18 percent and six percent respectively, putting the share of the three South Asian countries at 74 percent of the total labor force in the sector, the ministry added
The demographics bulletin pointed out that there were 5,859 births in Dubai’s government hospitals during the first half of this year, of these 2,933 were male and 2,926 female.
Land deals worth 22.9 billion dirhams were carried out in Dubai during the period under review while 1,128 buildings were completed at a cost of 5.579 billion dirhams, of which 207 investment buildings, 710 residential buildings, and 211 buildings were meant for recreational, service and industrial purposes.
The total number of airline trips at Dubai International Airport during the first six months of this year was 116,543 carrying a total of 13.76 million passengers, of whom 6.67 million were arrivals and 6.63 million were departures. There were 457,000 transit passengers.
In Dubai, there are a total of 302 hotels that consist 30,648 rooms. The hotels recorded during the period under review a total of 2,652,771 guests. The total number of nights spent by the guests was 6,737,791 and the overall occupancy rate was 75.5 percent.
There were 111 hotel apartments in Dubai by June, offering a total of 8,652 apartments and had a total of 467,890 guests during the period under review, with the total nights of stay being 1,623,750 and the occupancy rate 71.1 percent.
