While most people would think that Dubai got rich only because of oil, today, oil makes barely one percent of its entire GDP. In fact, Dubai has lesser oil reserves than India and even Vietnam. Yet while today, many oil-rate nations are struggling to grow, this city has become such an important financial business hub that out of the 500 most prominent companies in the World, an astonishing 140 companies have their headquarters in this tiny city of Dubai.
In Global politics, it is more or less the epicenter of World Trade itself. The question is, in just 40 years, how did this little city of Dubai go from the Barren desert to becoming one of the wealthiest in the World? How did they manage to achieve this without banking on their oil Reserves ? And most importantly, India needs to learn lessons from the iconic rise of Dubai.
To understand this, you first must understand the Middle East’s basic structure because most people don’t know the difference between UAE, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. So this is the middle East region wherein you have the United Arab Emirates or UAE.
What is UAE? UAE is nothing but a Federation of 7 Emirates which are Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umal Taiwan, Kuchera, and Russell Kemah. These Emirates are almost like states that work autonomously within the Federation. If this is very clear to you, let’s move to 1960 Dubai.
In 1960, the UAE had not been formed, and Dubai was just another fishing town that existed at the creek along the middle Easton trade routes. So let alone buildings, it was just another desert with nothing else but people riding on Camels.
This was when something crazy happened in 1960 the Middle East and regions discovered tons of oil Beneath them and suddenly, they realized that they were practically sitting on a cold mine. And as the oil prices started shooting up, billions of dollars began floating into the city.
Now, most people would ask what it means if you give something as crucial as oil reserves to any country or any leader, that country will become rich and Powerful. Well! Not really.
Because if you look at the oil reserves worldwide, you will see that UAE is only the 7th largest oil reserve in the World and if you notice something peculiar in this table, the largest oil reserve is actually in Venezuela. But Venezuela has the highest inflation in the World. The economy is going into a spiral of dysfunctionality.
Venezuela cannot eat. You see people eating from Garbage. The cycle of violence and street protest has become a part of it. So, Oil reserves do not mean you will prosper and be assertive. Even in the UAE, if you look at oil Reserves in the Emirates, we will see that while Abu Dhabi has 92.2 million barrels of oil, Dubai has only four billion barrels. So it’s not like they had infinite Wealth.
And you know what is the best part, when discovered oil, the ruler of Dubai was Sheikh Rashid Bin Sahid Maktoum. He said a very important statement that Echoes through the tunnels of time. Eeven today, he said, “I have good news and bad news; we have found oil but not much.”
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