(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Millions of expatriate workers come to the UAE to fulfil their goals and dreams of becoming financially independent and improve their quality of life.
Thanks to the economic freedom, many of them successfully pursued their dreams and use their entrepreneurial skills up to the hilt. There are many such examples in the UAE where expats started businesses on a smaller scale but went to become billionaires.
According to Forbes, the richest expat billionaires who made the UAE as their second home are: Yusuffali M.A., Sunny Varkey, Anil Agarwal, BR Shetty, Micky Jagtiani, Ravi Pillai, Feroz Allana, Shamsheer Vayalil, Tony Jashanmal, Rizwan Sajan and Azad Moopen, among others.
According to the latest report released by Fraser Institute, UAE residents enjoy very high level of economic freedom, more than the people in Turkey, France, Italy, Belgium, India, Malaysia and China among others.
The report has ranked the UAE 37 in Economic Freedom out of 159 countries, achieving a solid score of 7.5 out of 10 points.
More importantly, the UAE residents enjoy the highest economic freedom among the Middle East and North African countries.
Globally, people in the UAE also enjoy more economic freedom than the citizens of Turkey (81), Saudi Arabia (122), Russia (100), Qatar (45), Oman (97), Malaysia (65), Kuwait (97), Italy (54), Greece (116), France (52), China (112), Belgium (43) and Bahrain (49) among others.
Hamad Buamim, president and CEO of Dubai Chamber, said the UAE is an open and inclusive economy that is geared towards global trade and foreign investment.
"Strategic and forward-thinking policies and laws put into place by our wise leadership and government have dramatically improved ease of doing business in the country and enhanced its global appeal as an attractive trade and investment hub, as well as a land of opportunity for entrepreneurs from around the world."
He added that the UAE's strong performance on the Economic Freedom Index is a testament to growing business and investor confidence in the country as it continues to mature, diversify away from oil, and transition to a knowledge-based economy and global innovation hub.
Moreover, doing business in the UAE has become a lot easier over the past one year with the country, on the back of a string of pro-business reforms, improving its global ranking to 21 from 26 in the World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business" ranking.
As per Fraser Institute report, the UAE also scored very high in the sub-indexes of Access to Cable and Satellite, Freedom of Access to Foreign Information, Freedom of Foreign Movement, Business Regulations, Credit Market Regulations, Labour Market Regulations, Freedom to International Trade, Tariffs, Freedom to Own Foreign Currency, Money Growth, Business Cost of Crime, Reliability of Police, Regulatory Restrictions and Top Marginal Tax rates among others.
Surandar Jesrani, partner and CEO, Morison MJS, said the key booster for UAE this year has been legal structure and protection for property rights. The introduction of Value-Added Tax legislation in the UAE from January 1, 2018 could boost UAE's position further in the next installation of the Index.
"Fact-based studies have demonstrated that a good degree of economic freedom promotes growth, job creation, prosperity, and other positive social outcomes and that is what entrepreneurs dream of. A higher ranking in the Index would instill confidence in the UAE business environment regarding freedom to do commerce without external constraints. This could foster additional influx of investment into the UAE benefiting the economic as well as social goals of the UAE government," Jesrani said.
However, the UAE jumped eight places to be ranked 116th in the Human Freedom Index 2017. While in the Personal Freedom sub-index, the UAE was ranked 144 with 5.29 scores. The Human Freedom Index is a global measurement of personal, civil and economic freedom.
Suresh Panwar, chairman, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (Abu Dhabi Chapter), believes the most important reason for UAE enjoying the high rating is the freedom to trade internationally where UAE was ranked 25.
"The UAE has minimal trade barriers which is clearly visible from the various economic activities being carried out in the UAE particularly import and re-export activities not only in main land but also business entities incorporated in the free zones. Further, the exchange rate is pegged to the US dollar which also provide an added level of comfort to the business entities involved international trade," Panwar told this newspaper.
For last two years, the UAE has seen a number of regulatory changes taking place for the betterment of the economy and labour market so Panwar predicts that in the next report UAE will rank even higher in terms of regulations as the report considered the regulations of 2015.
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