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DUBAI — With the highest tower in the world, grand commercial centres and artificial islands, Dubai projects an image of prosperity, even as the city-state races to court investors to bolster it economy.

Despite boasting the most diverse economy in the Gulf region, the emirate's vital property, tourism and trade sectors have weakened in recent years.

Real estate deals plunged 21.5 per cent to $60.7 billion in 2018, according to government data, while the number of tourists visiting Dubai remained stagnant at around 16 million in the past two years.

"Dubai's economic growth has been lacklustre... following a weak real estate market and subdued consumer spending," M.R. Raghu, head of research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz), told AFP.

The emirate's economy grew by just 1.94 per cent last year — almost half of its 2017 growth and just a notch above the 1.9 per cent in 2010, when Dubai was still recovering from a recession due to the global financial crisis and its own debt problems.

Incentive measures 

But Raed Safadi, chief economic adviser to Dubai Economy, the government agency responsible for promoting development, downplayed reports about the slowdown.

"We are still growing. Yes, it is not at 4.5 per cent — the average between 2012 and 2016 — but given all the conditions around the world, it is healthy," Safadi told AFP.

He expects growth to pick up to 2.1 per cent in 2019 and rebound to as high as 3.8 per cent next year.

This prediction relies heavily on the Expo 2020 global trade fair that Dubai hopes will deliver an economic windfall and some 300,000 new jobs.

Safadi said Expo 2020 is expected to add some $35 billion to the economy over the subsequent decade.

But with the region's most open market, Dubai is exposed to global trade tensions, regional slowdown and the economic downturn in Iran under tough US sanctions, according to the London-based Capital Economics.

"All of this will weigh on Dubai's key logistics, tourism and manufacturing sectors," said James Swanston, an economist at Capital Economics.

To preserve Dubai's image as an economic hub, the city-state has implemented a raft of incentives.

Months ago, the government started granting permanent residencies to big investors and allowed foreigners to have full ownership of businesses throughout the emirate, including outside free zones.

Authorities also began offering long-term visas for foreign investors, students and talent, while revising fees on hundreds of services, freezing school fees and setting up a high-level committee to rebalance the property market.

With a population of 3.3 million — over 90 per cent of them expats — Dubai draws 70 per cent of its revenue from fees on various transactions and around 24 per cent from taxes and government company profits.

Just six per cent of its revenue comes from oil.

Public debt

Fahad Al Gergawi, CEO of Dubai Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), a public body, said reports of the downturn were exaggerated.

"The economic slowdown is not new to Dubai... but certain media reports highlight particular issues to show that Dubai is struggling," he told AFP on the sidelines of Dubai Investment Week held last week.

"We have passed through similar economic cycles in the past."

Gergawi said Dubai has been among the top 10 cities in the world for attracting new investment in the past five years and among the top three cities for FDI.

The government announced on Sunday that in the first half of 2019, the emirate received $12.7 billion in FDI, an increase of 135 per cent from the same period last year, surpassing even the $10.5 billion it received in 2018.

"In the medium term, spending related to hosting Dubai Expo 2020 and monetary easing measures would support growth. Furthermore, Dubai has been actively undertaking reform measures to boost the economy," Raghu said.

But Dubai, one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, still faces high public debt of around $123 billion, or 110 per cent of GDP, divided almost equally between the government and state-linked companies.

About two-thirds of the debt of state-linked companies will mature by the end of 2023.

But Swanston said a "total debt default" is unlikely as oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest emirate in the federation, "would come to the rescue" as it did when Dubai defaulted on its debt in 2009.

PARIS — European countries scrambled on Thursday to prepare a response to new US tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of EU goods after Washington got the go-ahead from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to strike back over state subsidies for planemaker Airbus.

But officials also indicated they still hoped to find common ground to avoid escalating trade tensions that risk battering economies across the globe.

"We've been arguing for a trade deal for months. Our hand is extended," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

"I hope the United States will listen to this voice, which to my mind is the voice of reason," Le Maire told journalists in Paris, calling Washington's move to tax $7.5 billion of EU imports a "serious economic mistake".

US President Donald Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, saying America has gotten a raw trade deal from its partners.

The Airbus ruling on Wednesday marked the first time the WTO has cleared the United States to impose countermeasures on EU products under international trade law.

"A nice victory!" Trump wrote on Twitter, saying the EU "has for many years treated the USA very badly on Trade due to Tariffs, Trade Barriers, and more".

However, the EU has also filed a WTO suit claiming illegal aid for Airbus's US rival Boeing, with a decision expected in the coming months.

In the meantime, the bloc has warned it will retaliate in kind.

"If the American administration refuses to accept the hand extended by France and the EU, we are ready to respond with sanctions approved within the WTO framework," Le Maire said.

 'Hit US consumers' 

In the immediate line of fire are civilian aircraft from Britain, France, Germany and Spain — the countries which formed Airbus — which will cost 10 per cent more when imported to the US from October 18.

According to US data, the country imported about $3.5 billion in aircraft from the EU in 2018.

But the tariffs also target consumer products like French wine, which Trump had vowed to take aim at in recent months. Bottles from France, Spain and Germany will now face 25 per cent tariffs.

Different kinds of cheese from across Europe will also cost 25 per cent more for American consumers, as will "Made in England" suits, cashmere sweaters and pyjamas.

Italian farmers breathed a sigh of relief, since Italian favourites such as tomatoes, olive oil and wine will not be taxed.

The Coldiretti agriculture body said the US tariffs would impact 500 million euros' (almost $550 million's) worth of the roughly four billion euros of Italian food exports to the United States.

The EU, meanwhile, warned on Thursday the tariffs would only end up hurting Americans' wallets.

"This is a move that will first and foremost hit US consumers and companies, and will make efforts towards a negotiated settlement more complicated," Commission spokesman Daniel Rosario said in Brussels.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday he expected to begin talks with Brussels soon to try and resolve the dispute.

The EU and United States have reached such settlements in the past.

But European officials had already offered in July to call a truce on subsidies for airplane makers, in which both sides would admit fault and agree to curtail state aid — to no avail.

SAN FRANCISCO — Several features on Twitter were down on Wednesday, the platform said, with users from Japan to the USA reporting they were unable to log in, use the mobile app or see direct messages.

“We’ve been experiencing outages across Twitter and TweetDeck,” the social media giant said in a statement, without giving a reason for the disruption. 

“You might have had trouble Tweeting, getting notifications, or viewing DMs. We’re currently working on a fix, and should be back to normal soon.”

Monitoring site outage.report said it had received more than 3,200 complaints from across six continents as of Wednesday, with users in the US, UK and India among those particularly badly hit.

Almost half of those reporting outages said the mobile app was not working, with around a quarter saying the whole website was down.

The site’s TweetDeck dashboard function allows users to monitor multiple accounts simultaneously and is particularly popular with journalists. 

Some users posted alongside the hashtag #twitterdown, although the site’s trending section was working only intermittently.

The multibillion-dollar platform’s popularity has soared in recent years.

But it has also come in for criticism, with its CEO Jack Dorsey admitting to US lawmakers last year that Twitter had been “unprepared and ill-equipped” for the vast campaigns of manipulation that affected social media.

In August hackers briefly took over Dorsey’s account and posted a series of racist and offensive tweets. 

Twitter on Tuesday also reported a minor outage in displaying user analytics.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to "go to the mat" to fight a government attempt to break up the social media giant, according to a report on Tuesday, based on a leaked audio recording.

Tech news site The Verge released leaked audio from a meeting of Facebook employees in July in which Zuckerberg said he would challenge a breakup effort, repeating his argument that splitting the company would not address issues raised by critics.

Zuckerberg specifically addressed the plan by Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren to break up major tech platforms.

"If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge," Zuckerberg said.

"And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to have a major lawsuit against our own government... But look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight."

Zuckerberg also told employees he did not plan to testify in other countries investigating the company on privacy and antitrust issues.

"It just doesn't really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up," he said.

Speaking of Facebook's planned digital currency Libra, Zuckerberg said he remained optimistic on its prospects despite harsh comments from public officials in several countries.

"The public things, I think, tend to be a little more dramatic," he said.

"But a bigger part of it is private engagement with regulators around the world, and those, I think, often, are more substantive and less dramatic... That's where a lot of the discussions and details get hashed out on things."

Zuckerberg also said Facebook was planning a new service to take on the fast-growing social media app TikTok, controlled by a Chinese firm.

"We have a product called Lasso that's a standalone app that we're working on, trying to get product-market fit in countries like Mexico," he said.

"We're trying to first see if we can get it to work in countries where TikTok is not already big before we go and compete with TikTok in countries where they are big."

Facebook did not immediately respond to queries on the report.

BEIJING — China's manufacturing sector showed unexpected signs of improvement with two indexes showing on Monday that manufacturing activity edged up in September, despite ongoing trade pressure with the US.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose from 49.5 in August to 49.8 this month — better than predicted in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

However, for the fifth month it remained below the 50 level that divides expansion from contraction.

But an independent gauge, the Caixin China Manufacturing PMI, was more optimistic, saying there was a modest improvement in overall operating conditions during September, with production and total new orders both expanding at quicker rates than the month before.

The Caixin manufacturing PMI increased from 50.4 in August to 51.4.

The US and China have been locked in a bruising trade war for more than a year, with the world's two biggest economies imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in bilateral trade.

Caixin said confidence among goods producers was still "subdued" as worries persisted over the outcome of China-US trade negotiations, set to continue next month in Washington.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, of Capital Economics, said the improved data was unlikely to mark the start of a turnaround.

"Not only is global demand set to weaken further, but the long-overdue pull-back in property construction is getting under way," he said.

"And with the fiscal stance unlikely to be loosened during the remainder of the year, the [central bank] will find it an increasingly hard sell to refrain from more decisive monetary easing."

Government data released earlier this month showed that industrial output grew by 4.4 per cent year-on-year throughout August, falling to its lowest level in 17 years and down from 4.8 per cent in July.

Earlier this month, China's central bank slashed reserve requirement ratios for banks — freeing up about $126 billion to boost lending to mostly small and medium enterprises.

LONDON — Stock markets in Europe climbed on Friday as fresh optimism about US-China trade talks took hold, analysts said.

The pound hit near four-week lows against the dollar amid Brexit uncertainty.

London stocks were the continent's top performer by the close, boosted by the weaker currency.

A report by CNBC saying that US-China trade talks are to resume on October 10 was well received as it matched the market's narrative seen in recent sessions, analysts said.

Trade optimism "is overshadowing ramped-up political noise in Washington and global growth uncertainties", said analysts at Charles Schwab.

Smiling faces 

But while "Europe kept a smile plastered on its face", US markets were more reticent, said Connor Campbell at Spreadex. The Dow index kicked the New York session off on a stronger note, but then slipped into negative territory.

However, Forex.com analyst Faward Razaqzada suggested US markets were ready for a breakout after absorbing so much negative news recently.

"What can't break you makes you stronger," he said.

A move towards easier central bank monetary policy was helping sentiment, he said.

Bank of England board member Michael Saunders appeared to open the door to a rate cut, said Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index trading group.

Pound tanks 

But the very same factor boosting stock sentiment caused the pound to "tank", she said.

"The comments from Saunders highlight the marked weakening of the UK economy over recent quarters, dragged down not only by Brexit uncertainty but also softer global growth," Cincotta added.

The pound fell to $1.2271, the lowest point in nearly four weeks, before clawing back some of its losses. 

The weaker sterling pushed up share prices of multinationals listed on London's benchmark FTSE 100 index.

In commodities, crude prices steadied, having slipped earlier following the swift recovery in Saudi production that slumped in the wake of attacks on its oil infrastructure two weeks ago.

AMMAN — The Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) will launch its new index the ASE20 index at the beginning of next month, according to a statement from the ASE website. 

In the statement, ASE’s Chief Executive Officer, Mazen Al Wathaifi, said the ASE20 index is a weighted index, based on the market capitalisation for the free float shares available for trading. 

It is composed of 20 listed companies that are most active and reliable in terms of market capitalisation, which are the leading companies in the ASE, he added. 

The full market capitalisation of the index constituents represents 77.6 per cent of the total market capitalisation of the companies listed by the ASE while the free float market capitalisation of these companies is 82.2 per cent of the total free float market capitalisation of the ASE-listed companies, he noted. A base value of 1000 points at the end of 2014 was stipulated for the ASE20 index.

Moreover, the sample of the ASE20 index will be reviewed quarterly, at the end of March, June, September and December of each year. This review also includes the calculation of the free float of all listed companies, based on the data received by the Securities Depository Center (SDC). In addition, the factor value is reduced for any company that weighs more than 10 per cent of the market capitalisation of index, according to the statement.

Al Wathaifi underscored the importance of the diversity of indices in the markets to give a more accurate picture of the prices’ movements for different categories of stocks and the market’s direction.