Irishbeekeeper

Has he got a nice looking daughter?
cancel that
Has he got a daughter?

Millhouse

She is 13 and under lock and key in Pakistan.

Brains1983

to her husband I assume?

MataHari

well...there is definitely something going on...doing the same journey every Thursday from Mirdif to Jumeirah and back starting around 5.30, used to take upto 2,5 hours with solid traffic on Al Khail now for the past 3 weeks been doing it in an hour...

Irishbeekeeper

Would you say that maybe most of them have changed their accommodation to a cheaper area (Sharjah, outskirts of Ajman) from within Dubai so maybe the traffic snarl has changed timings instead of just disappearing? just a thought though, I have no solid evidence to back that up.
Another interesting statistic to get, if we can would be, was there an increase (from last year) in student applications for the academic year 2015-2016 in the schools in Sharjah and Ajman? I have no idea how to get that fact of course, but that would be quite a handy fact to have.

Standanista

Mr Mohsin of Karachi, who doubles as an economic commentator while driving an orange-top taxi in the Deira area, told me 40 minutes ago that there's no money except what's sent over from Saudi and Kuwait but that we should not expect a crash, this from his 20 years experience in analysis of these matters.

Meow

I imagine he's no less accurate than those who claimed there was no bubble in the Dubai property market a year ago, are saying now is a good time to buy ad still deny there was ever a recession here.

mentalist

I believe alot of Indian kids are on spring break holidays, which may explain some reduction in school related transport.

al dente

Schlumberger have laid off a load of peeps.

Meow

Aren't they O&G? Have recent drops in oil prices affected them?

I understand that oil is no more than 5% of Dubai's GDP but it must be rather more in AD. Any idea?

Brains1983

Schlumberger let around 9% of their global workforce go. However they reported an increase in earnings in KSA/UAE last year and I'd be surprised if there were many redundancies here from them.

Oil as a commodity will probably be less than 5% of Dubai's GDP, but I'd surprised if that 5% included the support industry for equipment related to O+G.

Meow

Interesting and a good point regarding the support industry. Not my field so I hadn't even thought of that, thanks.


Overall, I don't foresee a situation here as we had in 2008/09. Adjustments, yes; some redundancies, yes; but not at anything like the levels we saw before.

al dente

A significant number from Schlumberger have been fired from here. Directly linked to oil price..

DXBtoDOH

It's got to be a lot more than 5%.

In addition to the major players you have the suppliers. There's hundreds, if not thousands of great and small companies feeding off the oil sector like the parasites they are, ranging from construction to design to procurement and logistics and camp management and catering and security. O&G may not be their entire business, but it's a large part of it. Then you have government revenues on a federal level. Budgets are based on oil revenues and when oil revenues decline, budgets are tightened and government spending declines and tendering slows down.

And of course there's indirect oil revenues. Investors from other oil rich countries slow down the flow of money into Dubai for everything from real estate to shopping and holidays.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least 50% of the GDP is influenced by oil one way or another.

Meow

How does Dubai make all its money?