For those of you interested in Learning

For those of you interested in learning new stuff, MIT has limited course material of its courses available for free online. The website is very comprevensive in the types of courses covered. Hope you find them useful.

Dubai Income from Investments

According to the recent article on The Business Corridor, published by alliedmedia, Investments contribute 25% of Dubai's Income. The news article further goes on to say that all the various depts will follow accrual-based accounting systems by the end of the year with 14 depts are at various stages of implementation. The aim is to get an S&P rating for dubai government. The news is ofcourse from Dept of Finance in govenment of Dubai. The director general further goes on to say that on the income side, divident contributions from investments in 20 companies account for 25% of the total income of the government.

The website of the magazine is published as www.thebusinesscorridor.com; however, i was not able to open their site.

In related news, Dept of finance is set to launch AED 12 Billion term loan/bond issue soon with the help of some 5 local and international banks. (Full article also in the magazine)

I believe the magazine is available in newspaper stands now.

Dubai Inc

Dubai should be called Dubai Inc. It is a corporation onto itself with all the trademarks of a major corporation. Below I discuss the various depts. of Dubai Inc. and their past performance. Please correct me on any particular detail I did not describe accurately. Any omissions are also welcome.

Profile: Dubai Inc. , part of UAE Group, has been the forefront in many a sectors over the last half a century. Started out as a port, major revenues for most of its history was generated by port operations. That is until, Oil was discovered by the company and quickly become one of the major revenues of the company. Over the last two decades, Dubai Inc is diversifying its revenues from oil to include tourism, property markets, telecom, transportation and business services.

Revenues for Dubai Inc are mainly oil sales for a considerable period of time, however now constitute a minority as revenues from other sectors have taken over. Costs are marginal thanks to low costs of outsourcing human labor.

More about the various companies/depts under Dubai Inc. Coming soon. Accounting Department;Information Technology/Telecom;Finance;Marketing;Human Resources.

Banning Cycling!

I have heard of Trucks being banned in residensial areas, cars probihited in high-foot traffic areas and similar cases of restictions imposed for the benefit of the society. Now sharjah decided to ban cyclists from roads of sharjah. Not that bikers are running towards sharjah to bike for a few hours of the day. More important are the reasons of banning.

The Municipality is apparently trying to clamp down on “uncivilised” people who transport scrap, especially cardboard, on the back of bikes.

Would it be not more benifical to implement good wastage collection system? Banning the cheapest available mode of transportation is not the solution! Considering that most of the public transportation in UAE is stuck in dark ages and markets the future as 22nd century city; the government must realise the future of public transportation is in the direction taken by cities such as San Francisco which has the one of the longest biker routes of the world and not in cities like LA, known worldover for its traffic jams and highways.