Dubai: no green shoots in the desert

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Dubai was emblematic of the excesses of the boom. Yet at a time when people in the West are talking about the "green shoots" of recovery, the once glossy playground of the United Arab Emirates remains barren of clear turnaround signs.

Humbled Dubai is still resolving its gargantuan debt issues. The resource-scarce emirate publicly began to confront its financial problems only last November, when it revealed that its sovereign debt and that of government-affiliated companies amounted to $80bn. Of this, roughly $19bn requires refinancing by 2010, according to various rating agencies.

Significant progress has been made. Dubai launched a $20bn bond programme in February. Half of this was fully subscribed to by the UAE central bank. The move was effectively a partial bail-out by the UAE's federal government, based in the neighbouring resource-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi. The central bank also agreed to underwrite the remaining $10bn.