Function of Government in UAE Economy - Essay Example

Since then, UAE has witnessed great transformation into a modern state economy with high quality of life for its citizens (Mankiw, 2011, p. 651). There are no doubts in the fact that much of the credit for the same goes to the government and the policymakers who undertook such policy actions and steps to facilitate growth, employment, trade and investment (Ghareeb & Abed, 2010, p. 36). Almost 8 percent of the proven oil reserves of the world are under the control of UAE making it the sixth largest oil rich country in the world (Sayan, 2009, p. 135). They used the wealth earned from oil exports to build a more diversified and sustainable economic structure for their citizens and spent excessively on their development of country’s human resource.

This is one of the reasons that when political insurgency and waves of revolution were spreading all over the Middle Eastern region and Arab World, UAE remained relatively very stable (Rostin, 2011, p. 55). This paper is an attempt to explore the various economic policies that the UAE government has employed in the past, present, near future in order to create employment, boost GDP, investment, and growth, tackle inflation, and manage international trade. Discussion According to the figures from the year 2010, the population of UAE was just over 8.

2 million people and only 15-20 percent of these people were UAE nationals of Emiratis and the rest being foreigners from different parts of the world. In fact, the country has the highest net migration rate in the world of over 23. Furthermore, it is expected by the end of the year 2020, Emiratis will only make up 10 percent of the total population of UAE (Rostin, 2011, p. 55). This decreasing proportion of locals and natives in the country has forced the policymakers to create an Emiratisation program the focus on which remains to employ UAE nationals in an efficient and meaningful manner in private and public sector (Devlin, 2010, p. 25). This is important because although the presence of talented and skilful emigrants is boosting the GDP of the country and the foreign direct investment in increasing employment opportunities but the wealth generated by these people usually go to their home countries in form of remittances and very little of the same is spent within the country (Campbell, 2005, p. 36). Furthermore, the nationals of the country are usually less educated, less trained, and skilful thus making it troublesome for the employers to provide them with work, which explains why they only make up 0.

5 percent of the total employment force in the private sector (Sayan, 2009, p. 135; Mallakh, 2009, pp. 250-252). In order to solve this program, the government has enforced rules for corporations and companies to employ a certain percentage of UAE nationals. Moreover, the spending on the government on education and employee training is also increasing so that more and more Emiratis could take up jobs on merit in the future and the country could gather a pool of business leaders for tomorrow (Gorgenlander, 2011, p.

205; Rostin, 2011, p. 55). Another important step taken by the authorities of UAE to facilitate investment, which would in turn create employment and boost GDP, was the creation of free trade zones. The country has over 20 free trade zones, Dubai Media City, Abu Dhabi Airport Free Zone, Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai Car and Automotive City Free Zone and Khalifa Port and Industrial Zone