ABU DHABI, June 21 / WAM / The Emirates Central Bank has maintained its expectations for the country’s total real GDP growth of 4.3% and non-oil sector growth of 4.6% next year 2024. Oil sector is about 3.5%.
In its quarterly review report for the first quarter of this year, the UAE economy continued to grow at a strong pace in the first quarter of this year, supported by strong performance in the non-oil sector, the central bank said. The country’s GDP will grow to 3.3% in 2023.
The central bank expects the non-oil sector to grow by 4.5% in 2023, with growth in the travel and tourism sector expected to pick up later this year due to acceleration in private and public investment.
The report indicated that the private sector showed strong dynamism, benefiting from several decisions to increase inflows of foreign direct investment and attract top talent.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index for the UAE showed expansion in the non-oil private sector for the twenty-eighth consecutive month, reaching 55.9 last March and averaging 55.3 in 2022, indicating growth in new business. The country recorded its fastest pace since last October, prompting firms to buy inputs at their strongest rate in five years.
He explained that Dubai’s Purchasing Managers’ Index showed an increase in growth momentum at the end of the first quarter of this year, as companies expanded their capacity to support expansion of production, which was reflected in a strong increase in jobs and employment. Inventory, growth rates hit multi-year record numbers.
He pointed out that domestic consumption recorded a good performance in the first quarter of this year, driven by an increase in the average gross employment of people employed in the UAE and wages paid in private companies for the 3-month period. In the first quarter of 2023, it recorded year-on-year decimal growth, with levels and growth above pre-Covid-19 levels.
According to the central bank’s report, the Sutten Survey of Purchasing Managers showed an uptick in the labor market in the non-oil private sector last March, with an acceleration in the growth of new orders leading to the fastest increase in employment since July. 2016.
He pointed out that the banking sector continues to support investments in the private sector, with credit to the private sector increasing by 5.9% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year.
He explained that the hospitality sector saw significant growth in the first quarter of this year, mainly as a result of tourist arrivals from India, Russia and the Sultanate of Oman, with the number of tourists visiting Dubai reaching 4.7 million. In the first quarter, the number of tourists increased by 700 thousand compared to the same period of the year. Last year, the number of hotel guests in Abu Dhabi increased by 34% to 1.2 million guests in the first quarter.
The civil aviation sector in the UAE succeeded in recovering passenger traffic before the “Covid-19” pandemic, as the country’s airports received 31.8 million passengers in the first quarter, an increase of 11.5 million passengers. During the same period last year.
He said the overall amount of investments in the country’s civil aviation sector exceeded one trillion dirhams, while investments in upgrading and expanding airports to accommodate more than 300 million passengers annually amounted to about 85 billion dirhams.
The report indicated that the aviation sector in the UAE contributes directly or indirectly to around 14% of GDP, compared to 2 to 3% in major emerging markets and advanced economies.