Some time towards the end of last year, something extraordinary took place in the Gulf: the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) became the biggest wholesale banking market in the region, bigger than all the others combined in terms of the bread-and-butter business of loans and deposits.
Despite the global financial crisis, and despite (or perhaps because of) the Arab Spring, loans and deposits for DIFC financial institutions showed huge growth: in the three years to the end of last year, loans and deposits recorded about 40 per cent average annual growth.
In the first quarter of this year, loans originating in the DIFC totalled US$14.7 billion (Dh53.99bn), while deposits stood at $12.8bn.
Who says so? Why, none other than the DIFC itself. Dubai's financial hub has just published its first volume of monetary and financial statistics, covering the period from 2008 up to the beginning of this year. It is promised to be a quarterly survey by the DIFC's economics team under Nasser Saidi.
There are some caveats to the DIFC's extraordinary performance: financial institutions in the centre are overwhelmingly involved in wholesale banking, so a comparison with GCC neighbours does not take into account retail banking business; and transactions in the DIFC are booked in United States dollars, rather than in local currencies used elsewhere in the Gulf.
But even so, the statistics seem to mark a stunning vindication of Dubai's ambition to become the premier financial marketplace of the Gulf, indeed of the Middle East.
Two factors are behind the achievement. First, the seemingly irresistible rise of the Asian economies, especially China's. China has obviously decided to use the centre as the main cockpit for its foreign direct investment push into Africa and South Asia. There are now as many Asian banks in the DIFC as US and European banks combined.
Second, the statistics prove the extraordinary financial effects of the Arab Spring. The "haven" phenomenon has been much talked about, but now we have some proof. Institutions from Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere opened offices in the DIFC, and foreign investors used the DIFC as a holding centre for capital destined for the Middle East.
When the growth of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and the resilience of the underlying economy in trade, tourism and transport are taken into account, it looks like a pretty positive picture of the emirate's future.
But there is a blot on the otherwise impressive record of recovery: equity markets are simply not playing their part in the otherwise remarkable financial resurgence of Dubai. "They are not doing their job," said Mr Saidi bluntly.
With a liquidity pool of some $3 trillion (about the same as China) in the Middle East, Dubai should be up there among the biggest and best, like Hong Kong and Tokyo.
But this has just not happened. Saudi Arabia remains the biggest equity exchange by market capitalisation, accounting for more than 51 per cent of the value of Gulf stocks. The UAE comes in with 20 per cent, of which the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange is the biggest. Nasdaq Dubai and the Dubai Financial Market have a meagre 5.2 per cent and 4.1 per cent, respectively.
"We're just not doing financial markets properly," said Mr Saidi.
The UAE is nowhere near as big as Hong Kong in equities and derivatives, yet it has three markets. There are all sorts of reasons why this is so, but it remains a major hurdle for Dubai's financial ambitions.
Mr Saidi believes the change can come only when regional policymakers stop using energy revenue as the primary source of funding for infrastructure investment, and instead use equity and debt instruments.
"Oil revenue is not income, it's wealth," he says. "It's a bit like selling a bit of your house for cash every year. Eventually you end up with nowhere to live."
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