Fujairah’s underdeveloped
real estate market could be poised for an upturn in 2011, the director general
of Fujairah Free Zone (FFZ) has said.
In the last two years, the
majority of companies joining the free zone were in the fields of real estate
and construction, laying the ground for an upswing in real estate investment in
the emirate, said Sharief
Habib Al Awadhi.
“The majority that we’ve been
catering to have been regarding construction, building, engineering, designing
and arrangements to do with the related fields of real estate activities,” he
told Arabian Business.
Fujairah’s fledgling property market was least affected by the UAE-wide
property crash, that wiped 60 percent off real estate prices in Dubai.
Fujairah, by comparison, saw a drop of 10 percent, according to a report
by property services company Asteco, followed by Sharjah which saw a decline of
26 percent.
The emirate instead focused on
investing in the oil and gas industries, while exploiting its location on the
Gulf of Oman to develop its maritime industry.
The strategy helped stave
off the worst of the effects of the economic crisis, which were felt strongly
in neighbouring Dubai, said Al Awahdi.
“In many of these [emirates],
it was simply a matter of copy and paste. We know about the international
crisis, but it’s not only that, we’ve overdone many things. You have a country
with a limited population, a limited geographical space and you have too many
shopping centres, too many resorts, too many hotels, and it’s too many,” he
said.
Trade from the FFZ comprises
nearly 50 percent of Fujairah’s GDP, according to Al Awahdi.
Export trade from the zone
is poised to hit $1.36bn in 2011, he said.
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