Dubai set to clear the high bar of its Islamic economy ambitions

Those charged with implementing the vision of making Dubai the capital of the global Islamic economy have a challenging task on their hands.

When Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, first announced the strategy, he gave them five years to make it happen. Then, in October – in an acceleration of policy reinforced by the strength of the emirate’s economic and financial recovery – he went up a gear and put a three year deadline on the project.

By October 2016, Dubai should be the hub of a global economy worth nearly US$7 trillion, the fourth largest economic bloc in the world, after the United States, China and the European Union. It is a dazzling prize, but a daunting ambition.

The task has been entrusted to Dubai’s best, the people who helped to see the emirate through the worst economic time in its history – the financial crisis of 2009-10. The nine-member board selected by Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed, the Crown Prince, chose Abdullah Mohammed Al Awar as their chief executive, in effect the project manager for the “capital of Islamic economy”.

Mr Al Awar has a sound pedigree. He was chief executive of the Dubai International Financial Centre during the turbulent years of 2009-12. Before that, he played a leading role in some of Dubai’s big success stories, such as free zones and banking.

So, with experience as a successful infrastructure builder, he is well-suited to the intricate job ahead. “Seven pillars” of the global Islamic economy need to be built, and more than 40 “initiatives” launched to provide the foundations for those pillars.

Mr Al Awar could be forgiven for thinking he actually has at least 280 individual tasks to complete between now and late 2016.

Those tasks comprise very diverse sectors, from finance, through food and tourism, down to arts, and the digital economy. Dubai wants to be the global Islamic leader in those sectors. As well as those, it also wants to develop the educational infrastructure necessary to sustain such a huge transformation.

And on top of all that, it wants the rest of the Islamic world to buy it. Dubai wants to become the recognised world standard for all things to do with the Islamic economy.

Fortunately, as Mr Al Awar was able to explain, some serious progress had been made on meeting the agenda. In Islamic finance, there have been big steps towards grabbing some of the Islamic business. In the Sharia banking instruments of sukuk and murabaha, Dubai has laid the foundation for a real challenge to London and Kuala Lumpur, the current global hubs.

There have been advances on the knowledge front, too, with the Dubai Centre for Islamic Banking among the initiatives of recent months. More are planned for later this year, when Dubai plays host to the World Islamic Economic Forum, one of the biggest events of the global Islamic calendar. This should help to advance Dubai’s position in Islamic economic “thought leadership”.

In halal food, there has been the opening of halal clusters in the emirate, at Jebal Ali and other free zones.

Dubai already probably has a head start in tourism, art and design in the GCC region, but more needs to be done to enhance and exploit the Islamic aspects of these and to roll this out around the world.

But there is still an enormous work to be done in the field of standardisation. The halal food industry reflects the diversity of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, concentrated in the great arc from South East Asia to west Africa.

How to persuade all these different countries and governments to recognise Dubai as the natural global standard will not be easy, and Dubai may have to settle for being the sponsor of some kind of “lowest common denominator” in food standards to satisfy all parties.

Pharmaceutical and cosmetics standardisation appears to have hardly begun.

Mr Al Awar is aware of the need to pursue a joint government-private sector approach to the challenge: trade missions to Malaysia, on the one hand, to talk about standardisation; banking roadshows to London to discuss ways to cooperate on sukuk trading on the other.

He is confident the goal will be met within the deadline. After all, this is Dubai, where the difficult is done immediately, and the impossible takes only a little longer.

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