A recent research from the Institute of Personal Care Science of Australia finds that the global cosmetics market is worth $334bn (Dh1.2tn) and the global halal cosmetics market is estimated at $13bn. According to another research from Euro Monitor International, the beauty and cosmetics industry is expected to increase globally by 8.5 percent by 2014, representing one of the few sectors that continues to grow despite the global meltdown.

While a Malaysian study described that the global halal business worth $635bn a year, had expanded from the Islamic countries to the Western nations with growing Muslim populations. In France, which is home to about five million Muslims, sales of halal food are set to reach $7.2bn by the end of this year.

Mah Hussain-Gambles, Founder, Saaf Pure Skincare, one of the first halal cosmetics companies in Europe, said “The industry has also benefitted from a rising concern about the use of harmful ingredients in cosmetics and 75 percent of my customers are non-Muslims.” She further added “The principles are the same – they want something that does not harm the body, the purity and that is exactly the same as the halal movement.”

Ahmed Pauwels, CEO of Epoc Messe Frankfurt, organisers of Beautyworld Middle East 2010 apprized that with growing consumer awareness and the drive for quality ingredients, halal personal care products were a high-growth segment with tremendous potential. Similarly, Elaine O’Connell, Senior Show Manager of the beauty trade show opined customers in the prosperous and high-growth markets of the Middle East were becoming increasingly selective of the quality and content of the products they used, and this was reflected in the surge in demand for halal-certified beauty products.

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Bloomberg reported that Emaar Properties PJSC, the UAE’s largest developer is still collecting installments and fines from about 400 buyers for two non-existent towers called 29 Boulevard. According to Mehdi Nosratlu, who heads a group of investors negotiating with Emaar, most of them have paid 30-65 percent of the average purchase price of about half a million USD on this 45-storey twin towers. Proleads, a Dubai-based market researcher estimates builders in the emirate have delayed or cancelled projects worth about $330bn.

In addition to Emaar, several others including Union Properties and Nakheel are entangled in similar issues with their buyers. Sources say there are plenty of cases pending in law court related to real estate disputes. One of the recent decrees by Dubai government orders that property developers whose projects never got off the ground due to their “failure or negligence” are not allowed to keep any funds prepaid by individual investors.

The new laws carved out for this special purpose from hardly three years of Dubai realty contractual laws is believed to protect customer rights. Major feature is that it will help purchasers who entered boom-time sales contracts with developers, but came up empty-handed awaiting real estate projects that never started.

Sadly, during the realty windfall, many have entered into contracts without proper scrutiny of the deal providing undue advantages to the builders. Prima facie, it is not clear that the new laws will have any positive impact on those entered into deals in a hasty manner.

Deutsche Bank’s proprietary price index, which covers 13 main locations in Dubai, indicated that average housing prices for apartments declined 1.1 percent on a month-on-month basis, while villas slipped 1.7 percent on similar scale in March. Dubai’s real estate market saw a freefall for 18 months with property prices falling over 50 percent from their mid-2008 highs.

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According to Emirates Business24/7, the companies such as Gemalto, Fundamo, mBlox and the Western Union are keen on tying up with the mobile service providers to cash in on the new market. The primary focus of these companies would be to extend services along with the GCC member states to countries including India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria, and some countries in Africa and Latin America.

Gemalto, one of the largest in the mobile payments solutions segment, is already working with du and etisalat. Pascal Oromi, VP for mobile financial services at Gemalto said currently, one third of Gemalto’s revenue came from the Middle East, and was expected to grow significantly in 2010.

Likewise, Fundamo, another player in this space who was unsuccessful at previous occasions for tenders in the UAE is understood to be positive on another shy. Richard Bailey, Product Manager at Fundamo pointed out that mobile money provided a ready access to migrants who still did not have access to traditional banking services by offering banks an opportunity to reach out to the unbanked.

As per latest reports, the Western Union has roped in Comviva Technologies, one of India’s largest providers of VAS to mobile operators to its Mobile Vendor Program for servicing mobile finance initiatives across the globe. Khalid Fellahi, Senior VP, Mobile Transaction Services of the Western Union, informed the technology had been a success in Kenya and Philippines, and an announcement on its mobile wallet plans in the Middle East was awaited soon.

Whereas, Andrew Bud, Executive Chairman at Sweden based mBlox said the high mobile penetration and also lack of banking infrastructure in some areas make it a top area for mBlox. The company plans to operate from Mumbai in India to cater the needs of the Middle East.

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The food imports have considerably risen in the last few years in view of the increase in population as well as water scarcity and hostile land conditions. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are already developing arable lands and food processing units in several Asian and African countries in a bid to overcome the snowballing global food shortages.

Harish Rupani, managing director of Equinox Trading, a food products trading company, told the Gulf News that growing food locally was not a viable option for the UAE as it costed three or four times more to grow local crops than it did to import. Dubai, the UAE’s commercial hub is one of the largest re-exporting centres in the world, and it traded in 2008 about $1.2bn worth of food-related items.

In the recent estimates by the Business Monitor International (BMI) indicate that food expenditure in the UAE reached $6.7bn in 2009. And it has been forecasted that it would grow by close to 3 percent in the current year.

The heavy dependence by the GCC on food imports also makes it the most vulnerable to not only price variations but also to increasingly changing food policies of the exporting countries such as blanket ban on exports of certain food commodities which are scarce in those markets.

The Standard Chartered’s most recent food report claims food prices are at a historic high and rising, around 80 percent higher than the low mid-2002 levels. Rupani said that prices of sugar and rice had tripled over the past five years.

The BMI is understood to have learned that the UAE government is making numerous efforts to increase the number of food processing plants in the country. The government has invested about $1.4bn into the food sector since 1994, and there are 150 food processing plants operational in the UAE today.

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Zayed stated the leadership and the people of UAE were confident, and would continue steadily and consistently the implementation of what it had adopted in terms of strategies and plans. The top priority was to build national capacity and launch human energy directed toward the horizons of excellence, innovation and competition, he added.

Dubai World’s announcement not only rocked the very financial establishments of the UAE but also many financial institutions of the region including that of neighbouring Qatar. Later, while the Dubai government detached itself from the investment firm calling it functioned as a separate entity, stock markets fell to the lowest level in eight years in Dubai, and Abu Dhabi and Qatar experienced similar trends as well.

On Monday, Abdulrahman al-Saleh, director general of Dubai’s department of finance said creditors should partly shoulder the responsibility for their decision to lend to the companies. Besides, Saleh remarked in an Arabic interview to Dubai TV, a station owned by the ruler of Dubai that the people think that Dubai World was part of the government, which was incorrect. On the contrary, John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi-Credit Agricole Group, said the distinction between the Dubai government and the investment company appeared minimal.

Without directly referring to the Dubai’s crisis, Sheikh Khalifa said any crisis on its severity would not be a reason for hesitation or retreat, neither a justification to despair nor inaction. He further added by saying that the country’s economic model would enable it to move from a labour-intensive economy to a more viable one of high-tech and knowledge-based which underscored environmental protection, and preservation of jobs for its progeny.

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A large portion of animal imports to the UAE come from the European countries including the UK, Portugal and Austria. There are several cases reported in the last one year from countries such as – Germany, Italy, Norway, Greece, Spain, Israel, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Algeria and Austria.

Blue-tongue virus is non-transmittable to humans and non-contagious among animals. The disease is characterised by changes to the mucous membranes of the tongue and nose, and certain types of midges are vectors of this animal disease. The ruminants including camels, cattle and sheep are chiefly susceptible to the virus.

According to new regulation, every animal arriving from blue-tongue affected countries will be individually inspected. Prior to the directive, only a random sample of about 10 per cent of each shipment had undergone inspection.

Besides, the animals should not be stung by the midges for a period not less than 28 days from the date of shipping. Regarding import of sperm, embryos and ova, the donating animals should be immunised against stings of midges for a period not less than 60 days before and during the process of collecting the sperm, ova and embryos.

However, OIE is surprised by the timing of the UAE’s move to clamp restrictions to animal imports particularly because these strains have been reported for more than a decade in Europe and the Mediterranean. Glaieul Mamaghani, deputy director of communications at the OIE asserted that the virus could not be transmitted to humans. The UAE ministry said that the effective date for the new regulation would be made known in a few days’ time.

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Some of the experts argued that the six Gulf nations had planned their 2009-10 budget maintaining oil prices at an average of $45-55 a barrel, therefore, taking into account the month-long stable oil prices at $50/barrel would in fact record marginal surplus rather than deficit budgets. Although EIB had warned of a deficit budget, they had ruled any possibility of 1990’s situation that inflicted heavy debt and low assets among the GCC member states. The reason cited is that they had accumulated huge financial reserves since last five years owing to a steady increase in oil prices, and particularly the first quarter of last year when the prices skyrocketed to reach the all time high of $147/barrel.

In 2008, though GCC member states estimated a budget surplus of $32bn, they amassed about $190bn surplus since the oil prices averaged at $95/barrel throughout last fiscal. Experts pointed out that if at all any member in the GCC to fall short of a surplus would be Saudi Arabia, because it produces almost a third of the total output of the region to make it the biggest loser or gainer while the prices fluctuate. As an OPEC member, Saudi Arabia along with other members had cut oil production several times since last November to halt the slide in oil prices, and the current production stand at 8.2mn barrel/day from last year’s high of more than 9mn bpd.

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Industry observers said though the intra-day trade saw marginal dip in oil prices, however early next month would see further slide before OPEC’s likely production cut on March 15. Nevertheless, they further predicted that the traders were expecting an increase in demand by April in view of lower stockpiles to spark off demand, and a gradual price rise would follow until it stabilized at $60 per barrel by September this year.

Due to the sliding oil prices, most of the companies are reluctant to increase their inventory expecting the prices to fall further and avoid losses. But by April, the depleting stockpiles are likely to prompt the buyers to increase their inventory, and the trend is expected to push oil prices up despite receding global demand.

In its latest monthly report on Wednesday, the Paris-based IEA stated the forecast for global oil demand was revised down by 570 kb/d to 84.7 mb/d in 2009 (-1.1 percent or -1.0 mb/d year-on-year) after the IMF again slashed its GDP growth prognosis to half a percent. The worsening global slowdown was blamed to be the reason for them to crimp the oil guidance further, the report added.

According to sources, the US crude oil inventory unexpectedly fell by close to 2mn barrels.
However, the lower demand due to the US economic crisis has weighed down against their reduced supplies severely. Similarly, the reports from China, the second largest oil consumer after the US have also shown the crude imports dropping by 8 percent, a lowest level in 15 months despite showing marginal increase in domestic demand.

The diminishing demand for naphtha, a by-product of crude which is primarily used as a feedstock for the production of plastic and synthetic fibres has also contributed to the price fall. The IEA warned the lower oil prices were forcing many companies to postpone or cancel many exploration and production projects which would ultimately make a huge dent in supplies when the global economy turned around. Nonetheless, analysts deduce that reaching the high of $147 per barrel once again is most unlikely as governments and companies are investing more on renewable energy sources owing to the fears of higher oil prices and climate change.

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