UAE’s Ras Al Khaimah eyes further expansion

The UAE emirate of Ras Al Khaimah with no oil and gas like its neighbouring emirates is planning projects worth $5 billion to 2020 with the help of foreign investors.

RAK Free Trade Zone (RAK FTZ) is currently home to around 4,000 companies aims to turn itself into a business hub for small and medium enterprises and lure more multinational investors for its infrastructure and airport expansion plans. Oussama el Omari, CEO, RAK FTZ, said: “We forecast 2,250 additional companies in 2010. In 2009, registrations and company revenue in the zone grew 10 and 11 percent respectively despite the global crisis, he added. Most new companies would come from Germany, France, Turkey, and India.
While speaking to Reuters, Omari said: “Some of the largest investments are from Knauf group from Germany, Dole Group from the ‘States, and Hyundai Group,” without giving details.
Solar power, the nuclear energy sector and education would form the bulk of projects in coming years, he said.

The authorities in the emirate, just 100 km (62 miles) away from debt-struck Dubai, are launching large scale projects such as a new international airport as a catalyst for growth.
RAK being the fourth largest emirate in the UAE is focused on industries like cement, pharmaceuticals, and glass, and building a regional manufacturing and shipping hub.

Abu Dhabi Ports awards AED1b contract for Khalifa Port

Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi Ports Company (ADPC) has announced the award of a Dh1.028 billion contract to a joint venture between ED Zublin and Al Jaber Transport and General Contracting for its flagship Khalifa Port and Industrial Zone (KPIZ) project.

The agreement is for the detailed design, construction, fit-out, testing and commissioning of the offshore port’s civil and structural building works, which will provide the infrastructure necessary to support the commencement of port operations in 2012, the company said in a statement. Work is due to begin immediately and is scheduled for completion in August 2012.
The contract involves construction of 23 buildings and associated structures, including the Terminal Operations Building – a six-storey structure that will become the port’s centre of operations. Other significant buildings include an offshore clinic, fire station, harbour master building, worker services building, four 11kV substations and maintenance and repair workshops.

Dubai Airports has reported a 16.3 percent increase in passenger traffic for H1 2010 compared to the year earlier period.

The six months to end-June saw 22,554,445 passengers use Dubai International airport, compared to 19,397,089 in the corresponding period in 2009.

According to an emailed statement released Monday by Dubai Airports, Dubai International processed 3,684,192 passengers in June 2010 compared to 3,361,413 in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 9.6 percent. Cargo continued its upward trend throughout the first half, with Dubai Airports reporting year-to-date movement of 1,101,856 tonnes of freight compared to 874,828 tonnes during the same period in 2009, an increase of 26 percent. Cargo handled by the airport jumped 21.2 percent in June to 184,576 tonnes, the state-run facility said

According to the statement average monthly passenger traffic in the first half this year stands at 3.7 million as compared to 3.1 million during the corresponding period in 2009. In the first six months of the year, daily average passenger throughput at Dubai International reached 123,000. “Many major airports around the world are starting to display positive growth following an almost year-long spell of double-digit decrease in traffic,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports. Griffiths added that in the first half of 2010 more than 145 weekly flights were launched to 21 destinations across Asia, Europe and Africa by different passenger carriers. Dubai International currently serves 130 airlines flying to more than 220 destinations across six continents.

Abu Dhabi is set to launch an automotive industry zone to include everything from building vehicles to services and sales.

The new zone is planned across an 11 sq km area of industrial land in Musaffah, officials said in comments published by UAE daily The National. “The automobile business is a huge one,” Mohammed al Qamzi, the chief executive of the Higher Corporation for Specialised Economic Zones (ZonesCorp), told the paper. “The strategic decision [of the Abu Dhabi Government] is to have something related to the automotive industry,” he added.

The news follows reports earlier this month that the makers of Saudi Arabia’s first car have begun contacting businesses across the kingdom to enter into a partnership to begin production of the Ghazal 1 vehicle. Engineers at King Saud University (KSU) built the SUV, which was designed specifically for the Gulf climate, over two years. The university aims to produce 20,000 of the cars over the next three years.
Infrastructure is scheduled to be in place by the third or fourth quarter of next year for part of the new Abu Dhabi automotive cluster, which will form phase 5 of Industrial City of Abu Dhabi (ICAD). ZonesCorp has already invested about AED4bn in the first three phases of ICAD.

Aldar Properties already has plans to develop MotorWorld, located in Shamkah near Abu Dhabi International Airport, to provide a one-stop shop for buyers from around the region.

The UAE is planning to export camel milk to Europe after the European Commission (EU) gave the green light, it was reported on 4th July 2010.

“The UAE is intending to export camel milk to European markets next year, to be among the first suppliers of this product to the EU,” Abdullah Al Janan, executive director for Agricultural and Animal Affairs Department, Ministry of Environment and Water, told the Arabic daily Al Ittihad. “We have received a letter of approval from the EU on the UAE plan on safety and quality of camel milk,” he added in comments translated and published by news agency WAM.Ten analyses and tests will be carried out on camel milk every month and their findings will be sent to the EU to match them with its export regimes.

EU officials will visit a number of camel farms, especially those producing milk, as part of the approval process. Camel milk is more nutritious than cow milk because it is lower in fat and cholesterol and richer in potassium, iron and minerals such as sodium and magnesium, according to a paper presented at the 5th Dubai International Food Safety Conference, which was held in Dubai last February.

The UAE will maintain the dirham’s peg to the dollar and has no plans to rejoin the planned Gulf monetary union “for the time being,” Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum told Cable News Network June 25, 2010.

The emirates “still believe” in the peg, Sheikh Mohammed said in an e-mailed transcript of the CNN interview on Friday sent by the Dubai ruler’s media office. “The euro is in trouble and we thought of the Gulf currency and we said, well the UAE said ‘not yet’ and I think they are right, until we are sure.”
Last year the UAE pulled out of a planned monetary union with four other Gulf states that aims to allow the region more control over monetary policy, now tied to the US. The UAE central bank faces no currency risk from fluctuations in the euro as almost all its portfolio is in dollars, Saif al-Shamsi, senior executive director for the central bank’s treasury department, said June 8. The euro has been the worst performer this year among 10 developed-nation currencies, falling 9.3 percent, according to the Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indices.

Dubai’s economy will shrink about 0.5 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund said last month, after real estate prices plummeted from their peak in 2008. The second- largest of the seven emirates making up the UAE, Dubai had to seek a $20 billion bailout from Abu Dhabi last year, after borrowing $109bn according to IMF estimates.


Dubai is currently developing a strategy to diversify power generation sources and improve efficiency to ensure an adequate energy supply through 2030.

Dubai produces less than four percent of the nation’s oil. The emirate is seeking to guarantee power supply and reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. The UAE holds about seven percent of the world’s crude reserves, with most of the country’s deposits of oil and natural gas located in the capital Abu Dhabi. Oil and natural gas production made up about 5.5 percent of Dubai’s $62bn economy in 2007, (Source: UAE Ministry of Economy). The UAE is beginning an atomic-energy programme to diversify supply and compensate for limited amounts of the natural gas needed to fire power plants.

Dubai’s ruler and Vice President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, last year established an energy planning council and an oil affairs department to manage production, sale and export of crude and regulate licensing of related products. The emirate announced earlier this year that it discovered an offshore crude deposit that it plans to evaluate and begin developing as early as next year. The size of the deposit and prospective production levels weren’t disclosed.

Government-run utility Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) is seeking international investors to build a 1,500-megawatt power plant and water desalination facility. DEWA plans to build in six phases a new generation facility located at Hassyan on the border with Abu Dhabi that would generate a total of 9,000 megawatts when completed. The utility, which slowed projects because of lower growth rates, still plans to raise generation capacity by about a third over the next two years to 9,800 megawatts
(Source: Bloomberg)

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is the systemic study of human communication. It studies the interrelationship between thinking, language, and achievement and models best practice to make it available to others.

N stands for “Neuro” – the mind.
L represents “Linguistic” – the language.
P refers to “Programming” – how we put together sequences of actions to achieve goals.

NLP is more than a collection of effective techniques. It is a way of thinking, a frame of mind based on curiosity, exploration and fun.


What is NLP?

The main aspects of NLP are:

1) Develop and maintain an attitude of curiosity. How do people do what they do? Human thinking is not random – there is a structure to be uncovered.
2) Methodology of modeling excellence. NLP explores the ideas and actions of the person to find out how they operate.
3) Visualization.
4) Smart goal setting and achieving.
5) Use of powerful questioning techniques.

NLP starts with you – learning how to guide yourself and influence other in an ethical way. Where is stops is your choice.


How does NLP relate to the business world?

Managers are paid to communicate effectively. This is NLP territory.
• NLP helps managers to understand people and how to motivate them.
• It models best practice so that important skills can be passed on to others.
• It models the business system to see how it can be improved.
• NLP helps managers generate business and personal goals and integrate individual and organizational goals and values.
• NLP teaches skills to make meetings shorter and more productive.
• It gives managers the skills to coach their people.

NLP is becoming increasingly popular in the business world and is being used in many different fields – leadership, sales, management, sports, education. It studies behavior, explores goals, values and motivations.

What can you do with NLP?

• Learn from your own most productive and excellent times so you can be more consistently successful.
• Make meetings more productive and effective and conduct them in a shorter period of time.
• Ask key questions to stop misunderstanding and being misunderstood.
• Be more influential.
• Know how others are thinking and how they reach decisions.
• Gain a greater understanding of yourself and others. Find out what your self-sabotage strategies are and get rid of them.
• Build more rewarding personal and business relationships.
• Develop your intuition by reading non verbal signals.
• Rid yourself of negative emotions – stress, fear and guilt.
• Set goals that are motivating, realistic and worthwhile.
• Be clear about your own values and your boundaries.
• Increase the limits of your senses – get more pleasure from life – be able to see, hear and feel more.
• Overcome present and past fears and stumbling blocks that hold you back
• Change unwanted habits.
• Build a powerful and compelling future for yourself and your business.
• Balance your life in a more satisfying way by dealing with conflicting demands.
• Understand how you think about time and be able to make the best use of it.

Goals are one of the keystones of NLP. Everybody acts in order to achieve something. People may not be doing it very well and may thus not achieve the desired outcome. NLP has a set of principles and tools to measure to ensure that business goals are clear, measurable, challenging and achievable.

NLP also gives insight into individual and organizational values. A lot of businesses have excellent mission and vision statements but somehow these are never able to connect with people’s minds and hearts and thus become hollow statements. Values are the essential keys to motivation and creative work.

What are the ingredients of an effective manager?

• They motivate through values.
• They are purpose driven, rather than problem driven.
• They believe in themselves and their business.
• They balance task and relationship.
• They can tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity.

Where is NLP useful?

For managers, leaders and consultants
• Motivate your people and become a more effective coach.
• Understand, embrace and manage change more successfully.
• Enhance your own leadership style based on what is important to you.

For teachers and trainers
• Be able to manage groups and communicate your ideas more effectively.
• Build confidence in your performance.
• Plan and structure your courses for the best results.
• How to find your own expressive style of teaching.
• How to deal with difficult questions.

For salespeople
• Discover customers’ buying strategies.
• Be able to find out what is really important to customers.
• Work with goals effectively.
• Build more long term relationships with customers.
• Develop more mental resilience.

For doctors, counselors and therapists
• Increase your sensory acuity to understand your client.
• Discover a way of working that is quick and effective.
• Take care of your own emotional state.
• Treat the person and the illness.

Last but not least NLP can be used anywhere you want outstanding and effective communication skills!

Around 35% of millionaires in the Middle East said they plan to increase their level of philanthropy this year, compared to the global average of 41%

Source: Annual World Wealth Report by Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.

HNWI POPULATION AND WEALTH CONTRACT SIGNIFICANTLY

At the end of 2008, the

• world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs1) was down 14.9% from the year before, while their wealth had dropped 19.5%. The unprecedented declines wiped out two robust years of growth in 2006 and 2007, reducing both the HNWI population and its wealth to below levels seen at the close of 2005.

• Ultra-HNWIs2 suffered more extensive losses in financial wealth than the HNWI population as a whole. The Ultra-HNWI population fell 24.6%, as the group’s wealth dropped 23.9%, pushing many down into the ‘mid-tier millionaire’3 pool.

• The global HNWI population is still concentrated, but the ranks are shifting. The U.S., Japan and Germany together accounted for 54.0% of the world’s HNWI population in 2008, up very slightly from 53.3% in 2007. China’s HNWI population surpassed that of the U.K. to become the fourth largest in the world. Hong Kong’s HNWI population shrank the most in percentage terms (down 61.3%).

• HNWI wealth is forecast to start growing again as the global economy recovers. By 2013, we forecast global HNWI financial wealth to recover to $48.5 trillion, after advancing at a sustained annual rate of 8.1%. By 2013, we expect Asia-Pacific to overtake North America as the largest region for HNWI financial wealth.

The report found while 55 percent of high net worth individuals (HNWIs), or those with investable assets in excess $1m, in the Asia/Pacific region plan to increase their philanthropic offerings this year. This is compared to 35 percent of HNWIs in the Middle East and an average of 41%. Middle East HNWIs were second from the bottom in terms of their plans to increase their expenditure on philanthropy this year, beaten only by those in Latin America, where 33 percent said they plan to spend more on charitable giving.
The term ‘strategic philanthropy’ means addressing the root causes of global problems versus simply addressing the immediate symptoms.

The number of High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) in the UAE dropped almost 20 percent last year, according to a new report.

While the number of HNWIs surged 17.1 percent globally, and the number in the Middle East rose 7.1 percent, the UAE saw its community of wealthy individuals shrink by 18.8 percent,

The annual report, the 14th in the series, found that those with investable assets in excess of $1m increased by 17.1 percent worldwide in 2009 to nearly ten million individuals.

The overall wealth of these high net worth individuals (HNWI) rose 18.9 percent to $39tn in 2009. The majority – 53.5 percent of the HNWIs – were resident in just three countries: the US, Japan and Germany.

The biggest growth of HNWIs last year was the Asia/Pacific region, which surged 25.8 percent. By comparison, the Middle East’s community of HNWIs rose 7.1 percent to around 400,000 and the capital they managed was up 5.1 percent to $1.5tn.

to survive in a world of constant change?

Definetely YES!

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust

The world needs a new kind of leader for a new kind of “philanthropic capitalism”. Developing the corporate soul helps businesses rise above the “bottom line of profit maximization and cost cutting” by becoming more service and value-oriented.

The world as we know it is at a crossroads and time has come that human kind must choose between alternatives. The first alternative includes capitalism and business based on exploitation – this the world as we know it – amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and disregard of long-term consequences. This unhealthy scenario is based on narrow assumptions about human nature and motivation. As a system, it is doomed to fail one probably not so distant day. It has become a voracious monster, which will consume itself if not transformed.

Summary Overview:

• The current ongoing crisis facing capitalism is non-sustainability. Unlimited greed and outdated thought patterns designed for the 18th and 19th century will destroy the 21st if not changed.
• The corporate soul must realign and focus on finding and using meaning, purpose and fundamental values in and through our work.
• In the spirited workplace, private corporations will function more as for profit public service institutions.

A Matter of Intelligence

Intelligence is meant to be the tool with which we cultivate our lives and win control over or co-operation with our environment. But IQ alone won’t access meaning, value and purpose. It measures rational, logical, linear intelligence designed to solve practical or abstract problems. EQ (emotional intelligence) enables us to use feelings to boost and complement our IQ. But SQ (spiritual intelligence) allows us to tap into and use our most fundamental needs. To transcend the crisis created by modern capitalism, businesses have to use the whole brain – IQ, EQ and especially SQ. Spiritual intelligence is the ultimate intelligence needed to elevate the corporate soul.

Why is today’s capitalist thinking unsustainable and damaging?

Bolstered by Darwinian philosophy focusing on “survival of the fittest”, capitalism’s own “laws of existence” (competition, profit maximization, capital accumulation) have locked business-as-usual into a ruthless pursuit of competitive advantage in a world of rapidly diminishing resources.

Reasoning

• The governing belief is that the earth and its resources are there for human consumption and control, ignoring the fact that the earth’s resources are being depleted at warp speed. Future wars will most likely be around water instead of oil.

• Humans always anticipate that the only way of moving forward is through reckless growth.
• Accelerating environmental damage which includes global warming, floods, air pollution, overfishing, deforestation, wasteful water and electricity consumption.

• Inequality between rich and poor nations.

• Too many clueless leaders. Considering making more money as the only motivator.

• Extreme short-term thinking – seen as lack of long-term business perspectives, not enough big-picture visionaries in the corporate and political world, maximizing profits by all means is often the only mantra.

• Overstressed humans who focus primarily on juggling as many tasks as possible, stretching themselves constantly to the limit financially, physically and emotionally.

• Society is bombarded with a flood of new products and services on the market, many of which with questionable use for human kind.

A way out of the dilemma is developing a high SQ

All humans are born with an innate potential for high SQ. It is a basic capacity of the human brain. Encouraging further development of spiritual intelligence in today’s business world the following key criteria can be identified:

• Know yourself – self awareness
• Master yourself – get organized
• Holistic picture – big picture vision
• Compassion
• Foster and celebrate diversity
• Reframing
• Embracing and thriving on change

We all grew up knowing IQ (Intelligence Quotient) was important. Then the world was introduced to EQ (Emotional Quotient) which it seems is a far more accurate indicator of adult success than IQ. The world is already full of high IQ but socially dysfunctional genius individuals. EQ, according to research accounts for more than 85% of exceptional achievement. Studies in this field show that the more complex the task, the more important is one’s EQ. Results of a variety of studies provide us with some stunning figures. While technical skills were necessary, they were hardly sufficient. The differentiators were elements of emotional intelligence displayed through collaboration and teamwork. Harvard professor and leadership guru Warren Bennis claims that in every case of leadership failure he has encountered it is always character flaws and judgment that have led to the problem. Character and judgment are the result of EQ.

The hallmarks of EQ are Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness and Social Skills. Those with high EQ are motivated, self-disciplined, aspire to excellence, continually seek to perfect their skills to add value. These qualities sustain long term business development and build strong corporate cultures that promote high morale and prevent loss of talent. But there is even more to be learnt and achieved if we are moving into the realms of SQ (Spiritual Quotient). While IQ allows us to think and EQ helps us relate, SQ allows us to do both these things during times of rapid change. IQ & EQ were sufficient in a relatively static world. SQ provides the linkage in times of paradigm shift and increasing chaos.

Those with high SQ have the capacity to question, think creatively, change the rules, work effectively in changing situations by playing with the boundaries, break through obstacles and being innovative. Our SQ encourages us to see the bigger picture, to be co-creators of the world in which we live. Outstanding performers have high IQ, high EQ and high SQ. This makes them alive, dynamic, sociable and innovative.

It is highly unlikely to find many of them in traditional organizations. Traditional organizations, prefer controllable “company soldiers” in the organizational wheel, rather than people who are switched on intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. The addictive rules of organizations heavily discourage those who think outside the box and have the emotional health to want to be their own person.

But how do we develop more SQ?

While IQ allows us to analyze what “is” and EQ helps us to adapt to the world as it changes, it is SQ that has us transform our world into a whole new way of being. The way to develop our IQ is quite different to that which develops our EQ, which is different again to that which develops our SQ. What is exciting is that there are holistic methodologies available that allow us to develop all three simultaneously in ways that enrich our lives and add value. The key is to find, embrace and use such methodologies effectively.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Wayne Dyer