RULER OF DUBAI UNVEILS NINE-YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN

UNCLAS DUBAI 000092

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TAGS: ECON ELAB PGOV SOCI AE
SUBJECT: RULER OF DUBAI UNVEILS NINE-YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN

1.(U) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Vice President and
Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai (MbR),unveiled a
new nine-year Dubai Strategic Plan for 2007--2015 at a gathering
of senior Emirati officials on February 3. The plan covers five
sectors for development: economic; social; infrastructure, land,
and environment; security, justice, and safety; and government
excellence. The announcement was heavily covered in all local
media, but with little variation in the story.

2.(U) The Plan calls for an ambitious 11 percent per annum rate
of economic growth and a tripling of 2005's gross domestic
product from AED 135.9 billion (USD 37 billion) to AED 396.6
billion (USD 108 billion) by 2015. This would, according to the
plan, translate to a 41 percent increase in the per capita GDP
for Dubai from USD 31,140 to USD 44,000 during the same period.

3.(U) The plan also calls for the creation of 882,000 new jobs,
which will raise the employment figure for the emirate to 1.73
million. The government wants to shift employment to jobs
requiring higher skills and also increase the number of Emirati
nationals in the workplace. Economic diversification, with a
focus on the services sector, is seen as the key to success in
the employment sector of the plan.

4.(U) Other elements of the plan address maintaining cultural
identity, improvements in security, healthcare, the standard of
living and quality of life. To date, there is little detail
available regarding these elements of the plan, although MbR did
in his talk specifically address issues regarding the growing
bane of most Dubaians, traffic congestion. He noted that the
coming Dubai Metro system and additional bridge lanes over the
Dubai creek, now under construction, would not in themselves
solve this growing problem and that additional, creative
solutions would need to be found.

5.(SBU) MbR also announced that a broader UAE Strategic Plan
will be made public soon, and that the Dubai Strategic Plan will
be fully integrated into the UAE Strategic Plan. Additionally,
the English language paper Emirates Today reported that "Sheikh
Mohammed said he will soon take the all the cabinet members into
the desert for two or three days to thrash out the UAE's overall
strategies and plans for all-around future growth." A member of
the MbR's Sheikh Mohammed inner circle today confirmed to us
that this "retreat" is likely to take place February 13-14.


6. (SBU) Comment: We will continue to see additional details
regarding the plan, which at this point seems to be more of a
series of goals and concepts rather than a detailed operational
way forward. We doubt we will see much more detail until some
time after the upcoming Dubai senior "retreat", the first such
event of its kind in our memory.

SUTPHIN