The Buzz Board
Picks from the Inner Circle
Foreign correspondent, columnist, editor, and author |
![]() Tunku Varadarajan, the canny opinion editor at Forbes.Com, published an excellent and insightful essay by Eckart Woertz, of the Gulf Research Institute in Dubai. At a time when it's fashionable to write off Dubai, once the poster city for globalization, Woertz brings shrewd and timely perspective in his essay. He urges that readers shouldn't fall for hype concerning Dubai, the flashiest of the seven sheikhdoms constituting the United Arab Emirates. Unlike its neighbor, UAE's capital Abu Dhabi, Dubai has little oil so it has generated rapid growth by borrowing heavily. The line was, "Dubai has the flash, Abu Dhabi has the cash." But, writes Woertz, the global economic downturn has severely affected Dubai's once blisteringly high growth rate. He cautions the doomsayers that Dubai already has a strong infrastructure that should serve it well when the world economy recovers. |





