The International Monetary Fund expected UAE to maintain strong economic growth of at least 3 percent over the next year until 2023 as per whereas it expected that UAE will register an economic growth up to 2%.
On the other hand, the UAE Ministry of Economy revealed that the UAE took the lead among the GCC countries in its attractiveness to foreign investment during the last year, with the acquisition of 67% of the total foreign investment inflows to GCC countries, which reached 15.45 billion dollars (about 57.2 billion dirhams), followed by Oman in second place, which accounted for 12.1% of these investments, while Saudi Arabia came third after having acquired 9.2% of those investments.
According to the ministry's report "Trends in Foreign Investment Flow through the Features of the World Investment Report 2018", the GCC accounted for 1.1% of the total global foreign investment inflow last year.
The report pointed out that despite the high flow of foreign investment to the UAE by 7.8%, Bahrain by 113% and Oman by 11%, the foreign investment attracted by the GCC, decreased during the past year by 23.4% compared to 2016, which amounted to 20.2 as a result of the decline in foreign investments to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.