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Having previously targeted Dubai’s position as the pre-eminent regional hub for multinational businesses, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) is now aiming to take on the region’s aviation giants. In an announcement on 30 June, MBS said he wanted to set up a new airline as part of a wider national transport and logistics strategy.

 Fujairah Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Hamad Bin Mohammed Al-Sharqi officially opened the expansion to Fujairah Terminals’ port facilities on 6 June, part of a Dh1bn ($272m) development programme.

Gulf airlines and the world’s two main plane-makers Airbus and The Boeing Company find themselves increasingly at odds over the terms of new deliveries, in a sign of the continued pressures facing the aviation sector. While the Gulf market has been a lucrative one for the two manufacturers in recent decades – as new low-cost airlines emerged and the major carriers refreshed and expanded their fleets – the coronavirus pandemic and a slow recovery is leading to orders being cancelled or deferred – and mysterious disputes emerging.

Dubai-based DP World is to start the development of the deep-sea port at Banana in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after agreeing amendments to a 30-year concession signed with the former government in March 2018. The facility will be the first deep-sea port in DRC, which has a coastline of just 37km.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) is claiming considerable success for its rollout of free charging to non-commercial electric vehicles in the emirate, following the launch of its EV Green Charger initiative. It has established a network of 300 charging stations as part of the Dubai Green Mobile Strategy 2030, under which customers registered with the EV initiative can charge their vehicles by scanning a QR code or by using a card.

Kuwaiti logistics firm Agility Public Warehousing Company has lost an arbitration case against the Iraqi government over a decision to strip it of its shareholding in Erbil-headquartered Korek Telecom. Agility filed a request for arbitration in February 2017 with the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) against the Iraqi government over its handling of the matter.

Saudi Arabia is projecting its multi-billion dollar soft power, with slick TV ads for Neom and a Dubai-style kingdom appearing around the world, showing a vision that, if not fantasy, is certainly still years away. Mohammed Bin Salman’s futuristic development plans and the social shifts they promise may eventually produce a vibrant, unrecognisable Saudi Arabia, but tensions with locals and testing financial questions remain to be resolved.

Emerging apparently from nowhere, the Neom development’s futuristic urban vision The Line has attracted a lot of international media attention. This is not surprising as this area of Neom alone is intended to create 380,000 jobs and contribute SR180bn ($48bn) to Saudi gross domestic product by 2030; a figure greater than neighbouring Jordan’s entire current GDP. The development will be powered entirely by hydrogen and other renewable energy, underlining the wider Neom project’s status as by far the Public Investment Fund (PIF)’s most ambitious scheme – a blend of state-of-the-art design and public relations gloss intended to ensure Saudi Arabia is associated with global innovation, rather than human rights abuses and intolerance.

The early plans for Neom were put together by a predictable line up of global consultants including Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company and Oliver Wyman. Since then, a succession of international firms have won large contracts: US giant Bechtel is providing design, construction and project management services across Neom, and also overseeing utilities and a transport system. New York Stock Exchange-listed Aecom has project management work on the 45km2 Neom Bay phase one and Silver Beach districts; it also has a contract for transport and utilities and is a consultant on the Industrial City section.

Arabtec Holding, an iconic name in Dubai’s construction industry, is to file for liquidation following a shareholder vote at its annual general meeting on 30 September. The company was responsible for landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa and Louvre Abu Dhabi. However, it lost Dh848.7m ($231m) last year and warned that its ability to continue as a going concern was at risk.

A flurry of deals between UAE and Israeli businesses have emerged since the two governments announced their normalisation of relations. Many of the announcements have involved memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and it remains to be seen how many will be converted into meaningful commercial arrangements.

The Dubai Airshow, which came to an end on 21 November, attracted $54.5bn of orders, according to organisers. While there were some large deals for military aircraft, the show was dominated by commercial orders by UAE-based airlines, with European consortium Airbus easily beating The Boeing Company by value.The largest deal announced at the show was Emirates Airline’s purchase of 50 widebody Airbus A350 aircraft worth an estimated $16bn.

Further to reports of financial troubles at two property companies owned by the Dubai government, Meydan and Meraas Holdings, Damac Properties chairman Hussein Sajwani has called for an 18-month temporary halt to house-building in Dubai, so that demand can catch up with supply. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sajwani blamed Emaar Properties for flooding the market; he said he believed that whereas 30,000 properties were due to come on the market this year, there was only demand for 15,000.

Work has stopped on Al-Maktoum International Airport (also known as Dubai World Central), whose mega-expansion would eventually bring design capacity to 260m passengers a year. Bloomberg reported that Dubai’s decision to halt construction activity and freeze financing commitments was linked to the slowdown in Gulf economies. Completion of the estimated $36bn super-hub’s first phase – which is intended to consolidate Emirates’ position as the world’s leading long-haul carrier with a capacity increase to 130 passengers/yr – had already been pushed back five years to 2030.

Neom Bay Airport began receiving passenger flights on 30 June having received a commercial airport licence. The newly-built facility is the first phase of development for the modernistic airport, slated as the centre of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s grandiose plans for an international tourism and business hub in the northwest of the kingdom. The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) said the airport was registered by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) with the symbol NUM.