DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates booked a consolidated state budget surplus of Dh36.2bn ($9.9bn) in 2011, the country’s finance ministry said yesterday, publicly releasing such data for the first time.
The ministry said the figure included the federal budget as well as the fiscal balances of all seven desert emirates which form the UAE.
Saeed Al Yateem, executive director of revenue and budget at the ministry, told a news conference that the data would now be released every quarter starting next year.
That could be an important step in increasing the confidence of foreign investors in debt issued by Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other emirates.
Since Dubai was hit by a corporate debt crisis in 2009, eventually receiving a bail-out of at least $10bn from Abu Dhabi, investors have been concerned by the emirates’ opaque finances. Some of the emirates, including oil-rich Abu Dhabi which accounts for around 78 percent of total UAE spending, have not been publishing budget plans or final accounts.
The surplus revealed yesterday was equivalent to 2.9 percent of the 2011 gross domestic product of the UAE, the world’s third largest oil exporter, according to a Reuters calculation.
An International Monetary Fund report in June estimated, based on government data, that the UAE’s fiscal balance swung to a surplus of Dh38.6bn in 2011 after two years of deficits.
The country posted a deficit of Dh23.0bn or 2.1 percent of GDP in 2010, according to the IMF report.
Yateem said the ministry would soon release consolidated data for the first three quarters of 2012 and would also begin publishing annual, consolidated budget plans for the UAE.
Expenditures reached Dh343.7bn in 2011, while revenue was 379.9bn, the ministry said without providing comparative figures for 2010.
reuters
