China key to Dubai's overall growth

Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) will continue targeting China for future growth despite its economic meltdown last month, its governor Essa Kazim has said.

A team of DIFC officials visited Beijing and Shanghai last week to detail the free zone’s plans to triple in size by 2024.

Meanwhile, DIFC highlighted the importance of China in July when announcing its ten-year expansion strategy, as a key target market in plans to increase assets under management from $10.4 billion to $250 billion, and to grow its balance sheet from $65 billion to $400 billion and hike up total number of financial companies operating within the free zone from 382 to 1000.

The China stock market crash in August could have threatened to put the DIFC’s plans off course – but DIFC deputy CEO Arif Amiri insisted at the time that it was “business as usual as far as our value proposition to China is concerned".

Meanwhile, Dubai Tourism was successful in attracting the IDA last month, a prestigious award ceremony that honours the Chinese insurance vertical, brining over 6000 delegates to the emirate. Dubai has been looking at strengthening ties with China and attracting tourists in large numbers for some years now, and DTCM believes the vision is slowly but surely paying off.

The efforts from both DTCM and DIFC highlight the importance of the Chinese market across the business and tourism.