DUBAI, 26 October 2003 — The government of Dubai will guarantee capital invested in projects in the emirate, the emirate’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid Al-Maktoum said in an interview published yesterday.
“Dubai will not allow any (investor) to lose ... If anyone’s investment in Dubai regresses, and if the capital regresses, then the government of Dubai will give him, and it will buy what he has invested in,” Al-Maktoum said in Al-Bayan newspaper.
The crown prince, who is the driving force behind multi-billion dollar projects that have placed the emirate on the world map, told the daily: “I hate failure, and I can’t stand it.”
The goal to develop Dubai into a tourism hub, he said, stemmed from a conversation he had with Arab ministers at an early age while visiting Kuwait.
The crown prince interrupted the conversation of the dignitaries and asked “Why don’t our countries in the Gulf, and in particular Dubai become promoters of tourism? ... If I remember, no one listened to me. “So I repeated the question, and I said that I was thinking of making Dubai a center of tourism and to place it on the international tourism map.”
Since that day, Al-Maktoum said in the government daily, “the competition thermometer increased and Dubai now has become as I dreamed, five million tourists travel to it (annually), and in 2010 we expect 15 million tourists from all over the world.”
Last week, Dubai announced plans to build “Dubailand”, a scheme to give the Arab world its own version of Disneyland. Sheikh Mohammed, who is also UAE defense minister, said the theme park would be completed after three years at a cost of 18 billion dirhams ($4.9 billion).
“The return on every project (in Dubailand) will be 18 percent, where will you find such a return on investment and in what country?” he replied when asked how he would attract investors to the project.
Oil revenues account for only eight percent of Dubai’s general budget, with tourism revenues and trade accounting for the remainder. Seventy percent of the emirate’s imports are re-exported, said the crown prince.
“Dubai has become an important financial center, with its own weight and importance. Dubai has achieved a silk road in the sky ... Emirates airlines started with two planes and with a start-up capital of $12 million.
Today the airline’s fleet consists of 60 aircraft and within two years or three the number will multiply to 120,” he said.
