Well - you hear a lot of rumours, but the following is a few reliable-source close-to-perfect 'facts' from this strange place here - Dubai:
- Regarding the stoies about cars with keys being parked at the airport; it's true. The police have 7000 cars holed up in their stores from ex-pats running off back home leaving credit still payable on those cars.
- The oft-quoted figures from the government that there is an influx of 40 000 expats INTO the country every month is so unbelievably clearly complete bs as to be embarrassing. I mean - what would \+40 000 new people be doing here!?!
- Those in the know at higher levels expect the ex-pat population in Dubai to drop by around 35% by the end of the year.
- If you have debts here that you cannot pay off when u get made redundant, you are best skipping the country, not trying to come to an arrangement with the banks/state... you'll end up in the slammer.
- There are around 400 western expats in prison in the UAE for non-payments. Does that help? What is that going to change?!
- Something like 55% of JBR was bought and say half that as straight investment (no rental). Whereas in Abu Dhabi there is a lack of rental accommodation, the opposite is true here in Dubes; when you look around at night, it seems like 50-75% of the appartments are unoccupied.
- There is no free-press here in Dubai. Papers are fined if they publish articles percieved to be damaging to the UAE's image, even if true!
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