The pace of activity in the construction industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is set to accelerate rapidly in 2014, with the government announcing a number of major development projects and stepping up spending on social infrastructure development, according to Dubai-based Wallis Marketing Consultants.
An April 2014 report by another consultancy Ventures Middle East remarked that the new projects, combined with many previously stalled projects now forging ahead, will continue to bolster the 2013 upswing into 2014. The same report remarks that the UAE's GDP for 2014 is set to grow at four percent to reach $404 billion, up from $390 billion in 2013, fuelled by the construction sector upturn and support from the oil and gas sector.
Wallis Marketing Consultants indicated that the Ventures Middle East report sets the value of the country's building construction sector at almost 60 percent of the total projects in the construction industry, followed by infrastructure, oil and gas and power and water, with total construction projects awarded in the UAE totaling $38 billion in 2013. 2014 is expected to reach $46 billion in awarded projects in the country.