DIFC's 10-year target: 50,000 jobs in the free zone

The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) aims to treble in size – the number of companies, employees, assets under management, occupied space and balance sheet – over the next 10 years and also aims to position itself among the top 10 financial centres globally.

The free zone aims to increase the number of companies from 362 financial firms in 2014 to 1,000 by 2024, workforce from 17,860 to 50,000, occupied space from 2.5 million sqft to 5.5 million sqft, assets under management from $10.4 billion to $250 billion and balance sheet from $65 billion to $400 billion.

The free zone is currently ranked among the top 25 financial centres worldwide.

“In our strategy for the next 10 years, we look forward to stimulating and driving our collective aspirations to enter a new phase of leadership, in a way that puts us at the forefront of financial centres on the global landscape,” said Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and President of DIFC.

Based on DIFC estimates, half of the growth over the next ten years is forecast to come from South-South corridor – India, China and other Asia Pacific countries while 30 per cent contribution will come from the existing companies in terms of their expansion and 20 per cent by targeting the specialised sectors such as sovereign wealth funds, high net worth individuals, family businesses, Islamic financial services and others.

Announcing the 10-year strategy at a press conference on Wednesday, Essa Kazim, Governor of DIFC and Chairman of DIFC Authority, said: “Our growth will come from deepening the core which is encouraging the large and current clients to do more activities. Majority of these companies are already involved in corporate activities and there are really opportunities that can be leveraged in the next 10 years to come. In terms of opportunities pertaining to capital market, we have seen huge activities in investment banking in the last quarter of last year when we had big IPOs listing on the bourses, we will encourage them to do more.”

The areas that DIFC believes that can be tapped are the family offices and assets and wealth management as assets of high net worth individuals and sovereign wealth fund stand at approximately $7-8 trillion in the region; but only $1 trillion assets are managed professionally.

“The region holds $7-8 trillion worth of assets and we need to attract those companies which can manage them… we have just started introducing some changes to our rules and regulations as we are working closely with Dubai Financial Services Authority to introduce those changes. Fund management and family businesses areas are huge – we have just 70 family businesses offices licensed but in terms of numbers there are more than 2,500 in the region.”

Kazim said that 50 per cent of growth can come by linking Asia-Pacific with the regional markets and attracting financial institutions from China, India and rest of Asia-Pacific to link them to the region.

He said the capital flow is huge in terms of trade, project infrastructure finance from Asia-Pacific. These are the areas that will have potential growth for the free zone.

In addition to that the DIFC will be attracting regional financial institutions from Africa, North Africa and Sahara Africa to have their regional offices in Dubai.”

In terms of contribution to Dubai GDP, the financial sector contribution is likely to grow from 12 per cent in 2014 to 18 per cent by 2024.

The financial free zone houses more than 1,225 active registered companies including 21 of world’s top banks, 11 of world’s top money manager, nine of top 10 law firms and seven of top 10 insurance companies.

 

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