ABU DHABI, 18 April 2007 — The United Arab Emirates unveiled an ambitious national development strategy yesterday that the government hopes will make the already wealthy nation the most successful in the world.
In unusually frank comments during a speech in front of government officials, Sheikh Muhammad ibn Rashid Al-Maktoum, UAE vice president and the ruler of Dubai, criticized ministries and state institutions, saying more needed to be done to ensure sustainable development and high living standards.
The strategy includes an overhaul of education and a comprehensive population policy to bring more Emirati citizens into the work force and reduce reliance on foreign labor.
“We don’t want to be first regionally or in the Arab world. It is not just talk — we are serious about being first globally,” said Sheikh Muhammad, launching the strategy at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The UAE is among the world’s richest nations with per capita gross domestic product of about $30,000 in 2006. The economy grew 8.9 percent in 2006, helped by windfall revenues from a near tripling of oil prices in the five years to July.
Dubai, the country’s business and tourism hub, has seen years of explosive growth, and plans to increase its per capita GDP to $44,000 in 2015 from $31,000 last year.
But Emirati citizens make up less than 15 percent of the UAE’s 4.1 million population. South Asians, mainly working in the construction and service sectors, make up more than half the population, and many key white-collar jobs are held by Westerners and foreign Arabs.
The UAE has faced accusations that some foreign workers are exploited and have few rights.
Sheikh Muhammad, widely credited as having played a major part in Dubai’s transformation into a booming regional powerhouse, said labor laws would be improved and strictly enforced.
“Those who violate labor laws endanger national security, threaten the stability of the economy and the labor market, and ruin the country’s reputation,” he said.
Sheikh Muhammad said improved education was essential to enable Emiratis to play more of a role in the work force.
He said the UAE had lacked a clear unified strategy in the past and that decision-making was often slow because of the country’s federal structure.
Sheikh Muhammad said government institutions also had to be made more efficient and singled out the Justice Ministry for criticism.
“The Justice Ministry is 20 years behind the rest of the state,” he said. “There are files piled so high that you can’t see people sitting in their chairs, and they don’t know what a computer looks like.”
Sheikh Muhammad oversaw the creation of the strategy, leading 16 ministers and 500 officials divided into six teams to work on the six pillars of the plan — social development, economic development, government sector development, justice and safety, infrastructure and rural areas development.
