The Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai issued 4,763 new licenses for various professional, commercial, industrial and tourism activities in October 2019. This comes in line with the continuing investor confidence in Dubai and new opportunities arising across diverse economic sectors. According to the Business Registration and Licensing (BRL) sector in DED 68.1% of the new licences were professional, 30.3% commercial, 1.1% related to tourism and 0.5% industry, and together, they created 13,990 jobs in the labour market.

The top nationalities who secured licenses in October 2019 were: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, USA, Lebanon and France 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 34,233 business registration and licensing transactions being completed during October 2019. The outsourced service centres of DED accounted for 26,385 transactions – 77% of the total – thus demonstrating their vital role in delivering value-added services to the public in Dubai.

The October 2019 transactions also showed that Trade Name Reservation accounted for 6,145 transactions, while the number of Initial Approvals reached 5,216. The total number of Commercial Permits reached 1,451 permits. The report also showed that License Renewal accounted for 12,342 transactions, including 6,031 (49%) transactions related to Auto Renewal via text messages.

The BRL sector also issued 270 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 channels, reached 339 in October 2019.

According to the main areas, the Deira area accounted for for the largest share (2,672) of licences issued in October 2019, followed by Bur Dubai (2,081), and Hatta (10). The top sub-regions, which accounted for 67% of all the transactions, were: Al Garhoud, Al Barsha 1, Port Saeed, Al Qusais 2, Burj Khalifa, Trade Centre 1, Al Fahidi, Al Marar, Hor Al Anz, and Naif.

Real estate, leasing & business services accounted for 46.9% of the new licenses issued in October 2019 according to the distribution of economic activities, followed by Trade & repair services (25.1%), Building & Construction (9.2%), Community & personal services (6.4%), Transport, storage & communications (5.1%), Hotels group (2.6%), Manufacturing (1.7%), Financial brokerage (1.1%), Health & labour (0.8%), Contracting group (0.6%), Education (0.3%), 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.