Dubai is Growing Too Fast

Dubai is home to 1.422 million people with over 292,000 new residents adding up to its demographics structure in 2006. Out of the total 1.422 million in population, 75.5 per cent are male and 24.5 per cent are female.


A total of 212,867 vehicles were registered, including 170,951 light vehicles, 5,256 buses, 16,304 light trucks, 8,287 heavy trucks, 312 heavy mechanical vehicles and 3,498 motorcycles, according to statistics released by Dubai Municipality.


A total of 2,222 buildings were completed at a cost of AED11.16 billion last year as against 2,252 buildings at the cost of AED7.87 billion in 2005.


As many as 5,640 land deals worth AED65.114 billion were carried out during the year, up from 4,880 land deals worth AED32.62 billion were recorded in 2005.


The number of mobile phones increased 20.6 per cent. There were more than 2.21 million mobile telephone lines by the end of the year compared to 1.83 million lines in 2005.


The landlines and fax lines reached 547,375 compared to 520,249 in 2005. The public transport buses in Dubai carried 87.840 million passengers compared to 84.26 million in 2005.


A record number of 12,385 babies were born in government hospitals, of which 6,292 were males and 6,039 females.  Dubai recorded 2,663 marriages in addition to 908 divorces.


A total of 28.789 million passengers used the Dubai International Airport compared with 24.782 million in 2005. A total of 35,380 vessels called at Dubai ports, an increase of two per cent over the previous year.


Dubai has 220 schools during the academic year 2006-07. Out of this, 88 are government schools and 132 are in the private sector. During 2006, 11,536 new licenses were issued, including 8,585 were trade licenses, 1,998 were professional licenses, 194 industrial licenses.


The total number of stocks traded on the Dubai Financial Market in 2006 was 39.644 billion, worth AED347.98 billion compared to 25.54 billion shares worth AED405.16 billion in 2005.

                              
Dubai imported goods worth AED219.871 billion during 2006, while the export figures stood at AED18.258 billion and the re-export figures were AED78.309 billion. The free zones imported goods worth AED122.763 billion and exported goods worth AED84.323 billion in 2006.                            


Dubai hosted as many as 88 exhibitions and conferences attracting a total of 984,638 visitors and delegates. Dubai also hosted 23 conferences which were attended by 52,660 delegates.

                              
The electricity produced last year rose to 20,314 gigawatt hours and the number of consumer connections reached 339,900. Quantity of water production stands at 68,312 million gallons.