Dubai among world's top financial centres

Dubai is the leading financial centre in the Middle East and the fourth most competitive in Asia, according to the latest Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), published on Saturday.

The emirate saw its competitive rating of 585 points increase by 10 points over the last report in September 2007, despite slipping two places in the ranking to 24th out of 50 global financial centres.

London topped the ranking with 795 points, followed by New York on 786 points and Hong Kong on 695 points.

Dubai's position among the world's top centres is a sign of growing importance of the Gulf as a whole on the global financial stage, thanks in part to high oil prices and huge government investment.

Bahrain and Qatar, ranked 39th and 47th, saw seen their competitive rating soar.

"The Gulf state centres have risen strongly in the ratings... Dubai continues to be identified in assessments as a key and growing regional hub, and Bahrain and Qatar have experienced the biggest increase in the ratings, by 59 and 51 points, respectively," the report said.

"Dubai and Qatar... have continued to gain significance... highlighting their role as important regional financial hubs in the Middle East and beyond."

Commissioned by the City of London Corporation, the report labelled Dubai an "evolving" centre with a high rating that was susceptible to change, while Bahrain and Qatar were judged as "volatile" with not such high ratings but able to move upwards rapidly if improvements in certain areas were made.

"It is interesting to see that Dubai... [is] already matching some of the established centres and [has] the sensitivity to instrumental factors to move towards the group of ‘leaders’," the report said. It judges centres to be either leaders, minor, evolving or volatile.

However, the report cautioned that the future success of Gulf financial hubs would depend on broad improvements in their competitiveness, especially in the area of financial infrastructure, where both Dubai and Qatar received relatively low scores.

The report ranks centres by assessing their competitiveness in the areas of people, business environment, market access, infrastructure and general competitiveness.