Dubai and Abu Dhabi to help British firms start up in the UAE

Britain's government plans to launch two business incubator centres for British small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UAE next year, in conjunction with Dubai and Abu Dhabi's departments of economic development.

Yesterday in Dubai, Lord Green, Britain’s minister of state for trade and investment, announced the British Business Centres initiative.

The initiative is a collaboration between the two UAE departments, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI),and the British Business Group (BBG).

The two centres – to be launched next year in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – are designed to help British SMEs establish a foothold in the UAE.

They will offer practical advice to newly arrived businesses, as well as support with affordable facilities and finding local sponsors.

“There is no substitute for that ability to share practical experience of what it is like to do business in [a foreign country],” said Lord Green.

“An active, vibrant, broad-based, supportive British business community in the markets into which we’re hoping to encourage British businesses to access is, I think, critical to their success.”

The centres will, for an initial period of 12 months, help newly arrived British companies with finding affordable office space for leasing and local sponsorship ­arrangements.

Businesses establishing operations in the UAE often find it difficult to find a local sponsor (a legal requirement for all onshore companies), and they face rising rents as the local economy grows, with rent payable on an upfront basis for 12 months, according to Jonathan Davidson, BBG’s chairman for Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

“What we’re doing is giving these businesses a 12-month launch pad, so that they can, at a relatively low cost, begin to trade and do all their preparatory and due diligence work, so that at the end of that period they know they’re moving in the right direction,” he said.

British companies that use the centres will be able to use the facilities of the two UAE departments for economic development to establish a presence in the UAE for the first 12 months, paying rent on a monthly rather than annual basis.

The departments would also create a local limited liability body that will nominate itself as a local partner to sponsor the newly arrived companies for a 12-month period, Mr Davidson said.

The Dubai centre is scheduled to open by the second quarter of next year, while the Abu Dhabi centre would open in the fourth quarter of the year.

Each business centre would be able to incubate up to 50 companies at any one time, said Mr Davidson. A chief executive for the UAE project was likely to be appointed by the end of next month, he said.

British SMEs looking to enter Abu Dhabi often face tougher challenges than their counterparts in Dubai, according to Richard ­Oliver, BBG’s chairman for Abu Dhabi.

“The prizes available in Abu Dhabi are perhaps larger than in Dubai, but in some ways [are] harder to get at,” said Mr Oliver. “We’re all about trying to make that easier.”

UKTI had held discussions to establish similar business centres in 20 countries, including Qatar and Kuwait, said Lord Green.

Edward Hobart, Britain’s consul general to Dubai, said his country was targeting bilateral trade worth £12 billion (Dh70.51bn) with the UAE by 2015.

“We’re well on track, we’ll see between £10.5bn to £11bn this year,” Mr Hobart said.

“We’ve had a 9 per cent growth in exports from the UK in the first half of this year, and UAE exports to the UK have gone up by a huge amount, far more than that.”

jeverington@thenational.ae