In a sign of continuing investor confidence in Dubai and new opportunities arising across diverse economic sectors, the Department of Economic Development (DED) in the emirate issued 4,057 new licenses for various professional, commercial, industrial and tourism activities in September 2019. According to the Business Registration and Licensing (BRL) sector in DED 65.2% of the new licences were professional, 33.2% commercial, 1.2% related to tourism and 0.4% industry, and together, they created 12,102 jobs in the labour market.

The top nationalities who secured licenses in September 2019 were: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Britain, China, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the USA in that order.

The ‘Business Map’ digital platform of DED, which seeks to reflect the economic realities in Dubai by providing vital data on each license category including their numbers and distribution on a monthly basis, saw 30,523 business registration and licensing transactions being completed during September 2019. The outsourced service centres of DED accounted for 24,109 transactions – 79% of the total – thus demonstrating their vital role in delivering value-added services to the public in Dubai.

The September 2019 transactions also showed that Trade Name Reservation accounted for 5,371 transactions, while the number of Initial Approvals reached 4,515. The total number of Commercial Permits reached 1,329 in September 2019. The report also showed that License Renewal accounted for 11,590 transactions, including 5,755 (50%) transactions related to Auto Renewal via text messages.

BRL also issued 258 instant licenses, which is processed in a single step without the need for either the Memorandum of Association or an existing location for the first year, while the number of DED Trader licenses, which allows to conduct business activities on websites and social media, reached 295  in September 2019.

According to the main areas, the Bur Dubai area accounted for for the largest share (2,114) of licences issued in September 2019, followed by Deira (1,939), and Hatta (4).

The top sub-regions, which accounted for 69.6% of all the transactions, were: Dubai Investments Park 1 (13.8%), Al Garhoud (13.4%), Port Saeed (8%), Burj Khalifa (7.5%), Al Fahidi (5.7%), Oud Al Muteena 3 (5.4%), Al Barsha 1 (4.5%), Al Muraqqabat (4.1%), Al Marar (3.8%), and Al Qubaisi (3.4%).

Real estate, leasing & business services accounted for 51.9% of the new licenses issued in September 2019 according to the distribution of economic activities, followed by Trade & repair services (23.4%), Community & personal services (7.4%), Building & Construction (7.3%), Transport, storage & communications (3.2%), Hotels group (2.8%), Manufacturing (1.4%), Financial brokerage (1.1%), “Contracting group” (0.5%), Health & labour (0.4%), Education (0.4%), and Agriculture (0.2%).

A qualitative leap in evaluating market performance, the Business Map reflects the reality of business movement in Dubai and provide daily updates that help investors to identify opportunities, geographical distribution of business activity and potential areas for expansion. For more information, please visit www.dubaibusinessmap.ae or download Dubai Business Map App.