Companies applying for trade licences in Abu Dhabi may need to provide more information under plans that are being considered.
Proposed additions to trade licence applications include the listing of paid-up capital and revenues for companies that make between Dh1million a year and Dh250m, according to Mohammed Munif Al Mansouri, the head of the Abu Dhabi Business Center, part of the emirate’s department of Economic Development.
“[These are] important requirements for the Abu Dhabi Statistics Center, Scad, as it will facilitate the process of data and statistics collection on the size and classification of establishments,” Mr Al Mansouri added.
UAE government officials have been counting on small businesses to play a key role in the development of the economy.
SMEs account for 86 per cent of the workforce in the private sector, according to the Ministry of Economy, while 300,000 companies can be classified as part of the sector.
But over the past year-and-a-half, SMEs have found it more difficult to tap financing amid increasing defaults as banks tighten up their conditions for giving out loans.
Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, the chairman of the UAE Banking Federation, warned in November that a number of small business owners might have fled the country, leaving unsettled debts of about Dh5 billion.
Gulf Finance, the Dubai speciality SME financier, shed light on the situation in a February report showing that confidence among SMEs slipped to new lows in the fourth quarter of last year, when the fall in the price of oil was most pronounced.
Some 74 per cent of respondents to Gulf Finance’s survey reported difficulties in their ability to raise money in the fourth quarter, compared to 48 per cent in third quarter.
mkassem@thenational.ae
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Education reform in Abu Dhabi
The emirate’s public education system has been in a constant state of change since the New School Model was launched in 2010 by the Abu Dhabi Education Council. The NSM, which is also known as the Abu Dhabi School Model, transformed the public school curriculum by introducing bilingual education starting with students from grades one to five. Under this new curriculum, the children spend half the day learning in Arabic and half in English – being taught maths, science and English language by mostly Western educated, native English speakers. The NSM curriculum also moved away from rote learning and required teachers to develop a “child-centered learning environment” that promoted critical thinking and independent learning. The NSM expanded by one grade each year and by the 2017-2018 academic year, it will have reached the high school level. Major reforms to the high school curriculum were announced in 2015. The two-stream curriculum, which allowed pupils to elect to follow a science or humanities course of study, was eliminated. In its place was a singular curriculum in which stem -- science, technology, engineering and maths – accounted for at least 50 per cent of all subjects. In 2016, Adec announced additional changes, including the introduction of two levels of maths and physics – advanced or general – to pupils in Grade 10, and a new core subject, career guidance, for grades 10 to 12; and a digital technology and innovation course for Grade 9. Next year, the focus will be on launching a new moral education subject to teach pupils from grades 1 to 9 character and morality, civic studies, cultural studies and the individual and the community.
What are the main cyber security threats?
Cyber crime - This includes fraud, impersonation, scams and deepfake technology, tactics that are increasingly targeting infrastructure and exploiting human vulnerabilities.
Cyber terrorism - Social media platforms are used to spread radical ideologies, misinformation and disinformation, often with the aim of disrupting critical infrastructure such as power grids.
Cyber warfare - Shaped by geopolitical tension, hostile actors seek to infiltrate and compromise national infrastructure, using one country’s systems as a springboard to launch attacks on others.