Hosting Expo 2020 to cost Dubai up to $8.1bn

Authorities in Dubai will invest AED 30bn ($8.1bn) in new infrastructure if it is successful in its bid to host Expo 2020, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum told Bloomberg.

Speaking to the news agency on the sidelines of the Dubai Air Show, the emirate’s top finance official said that financing the required costs would not be problematic as it “makes sense” and has a “business case”, without elaborating.

“We need to extend maybe the metro, the road infrastructure to the site and doing a lot on the site itself,” the head of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee said.

Dubai will discover on November 27 if it has been successful in its bid to host the event. It is competing with Izmir in Turkey, Sao Paolo in Brazil and Ekaterinburg in Russia.

Expo 2020 would increase Dubai’s economic growth by 0.5 percentage points per year and 2 percentage points in 2020, an earlier report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch said.

The same report put the total cost of financing the Expo at $8.4bn, or 8.9 percent of GDP.

The event would also create more than 277,000 jobs in the Gulf emirate, 40 percent of which would be in the hospitality sector and 30 percent in construction.

Dubai anticipates that more than 25m would visit the event over six months, including 70 percent from outside the UAE.