Dubai real-estate transactions totaled AED9.63bn ($2.62bn) in the first six months of the year, about half the amount for all of 2009, according to government data.
Dubai’s Land Department recorded 1,188 sales in the first half compared with a 2009 total of 2,327, the government said in a bond prospectus published on the London Stock Exchange on Monday. The document didn’t provide figures for the first half of 2009.
The deepest global financial crisis since the 1930s led Dubai property prices to slump more than 50 percent from their peak in August 2008 as frozen credit markets force the country’s largest mortgage providers, Tamweel and Amlak Finance, to stop lending.
The emirate’s property prices may drop another 20 percent as 41,000 new homes are put on the market by the end of this aggravate an existing glut, said Ahmed Badr, a Dubai-based analyst for Credit Suisse Group AG.
The value of property sales last year slumped 72 percent from 2008 to AED19.5bn. The number of transactions in 2009 dropped to 2,327 from 5,916 a year earlier.
Another Bloomberg report on Monday said that the updated bond prospectus also revealed that Dubai’s government had outstanding direct debt of AED105.47bn at July 31 this year.
The debt includes funds borrowed by the Dubai government to finance the expansion of Dubai International Airport, the first phase of the construction of Al Maktoum International Airport, other infrastructure projects in Dubai, borrowings by Investment Corp. of Dubai, and related party debt from the Abu Dhabi government and the Central Bank of the UAE for the Dubai Financial Support Fund and the restructuring of the Dubai World Group, according to the prospectus.
Dubai has no current plans to implement income or corporate taxes, the government said in the updated bond prospectus published on the London Stock Exchange on Monday, according to a Bloomberg report filed on the same day.
“The Dubai government has no plans currently to implement income or corporation taxes, although there has been speculation in relation to a federal government imposed value added tax regime for some time,” according to the statement. (Bloomberg)
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