Dubai to become one of world’s top maritime centres in 5 years

3 June 2015
Dubai named among Top 5 in ports and logistics, Top 10 in competitiveness and attractiveness.

Dubai – A recent international survey conducted by Menon Business Economics Group, the organization for benchmarking maritime capitals of the world, predicts that Dubai will rank among the top 7 leading maritime centres in the world in the next five years.

Industry analysts and authorities agree that Dubai is on track to progress from being the leading maritime city in the Middle East to becoming the seventh leading maritime capital of the world by 2020, ahead of cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Rio de Janeiro among others.

Abdulla Abdul Rahman Al Shaibani, Secretary General of the Executive Council of Dubai said: “Being the number one in the region, and among the top players globally, indicates that we are moving in the right direction toward accomplishing the vision of our wise leadership.”

Menon polled around 1,600 maritime professionals and experts from 33 countries of all five continents. The world’s leading maritime cities were benchmarked based on the four main maritime indicators of finance, technology, ports and logistics, and shipping, in addition to an overall assessment of the cities’ competitiveness and attractiveness. Dubai ranked 5^th overall under the Ports and Logistics indicator, and was named one of the five largest port operators in the world by headquarters (4^th).

Industry experts positioned the city 10^th in the world in relation to both the size of ship owners’ fleets and size of fleets managed from the city, ahead of cities such as New York, Rotterdam and Oslo.  Dubai also ranked among the Top 10 global players in terms of leading centres for port and logistics services (6^th); site of world-class specialized logistics services (6^th); and volume of twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) handled in city ports in 2013 (10^th).

The survey noted that strong knowledge centres with a solid pool of experts attract more maritime business to a city, and that marine insurance is essential to a functioning shipping market. With these in mind, Dubai again placed 10^th in the world in terms of both the number of maritime legal experts practicing in the city and insurance premiums collected (in millions of US dollars) in 2013.

Respondents also ranked Dubai 9^th in the world in terms of the number of ships classed by societies headquartered in the city. This is an important achievement as classification societies are vital to ensuring quality across the maritime sector. Finally, Dubai scored high marks under the additional ‘competitiveness and attractiveness’ indicator. It was 6^th in industry experts’ answers to ‘where are the most attractive business environments for locating maritime business?’ and 9^th in answers to ‘which cities have the most complete maritime cluster?’