United Arab Emirates

Money & costs

Economy

The UAE has the world’s third-largest reserves of oil (with Abu Dhabi alone having 9%); unsurprisingly, this underpins the national economy, contributing approximately 28% of GDP. It is thought that at current levels of production, oil reserves will last for only another century, and, sensibly, the country is looking at other industry to take over from oil in the future. Dubai has handled this with particular foresight and its oil exports now only account for around 6%, with this reducing to a miniscule 1% by 2010. Through its development of healthy tourism, trade, manufacturing and construction industries, Dubai has become the most modern Middle East metropolis.

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Money

The official currency is the UAE dirham (Dh), which is fully convertible and pegged to the US dollar. One dirham is divided into 100 fils. Notes come in denominations of five, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000. Coins are Dh1, 50 fils, 25 fils, 10 fils and 5 fils.

Moneychangers sometimes offer better rates than banks. If they don’t charge a commission, their rate is probably bad. Not all change travellers cheques, though currencies of neighbouring countries are all easily exchanged.

There are ATMs on major streets, in shopping centres and sometimes at hotels. All major credit cards are accepted.

In each emirate, a different level of municipal and service tax is charged against hotel and restaurant bills. This is somewhere between 5% and 20%. If a price is quoted ‘net’, this means that it includes all taxes and service charges.

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