Aluminium sector accounts for 1.4% of UAE’s output, study
The country’s aluminium sector, account for 1.4 per cent of the UAE economic output.
Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the UAE outside oil and gas, and the wider industry employed 60,950 people in 2017, with one in every 100 people working in the Emirates employed in the aluminium sector, according to a study by Oxford Economics and EGA. No comparative figures or projections were provided.
“Over the past four decades, EGA has taken the UAE from no aluminium production to the fifth-largest aluminium producing nation in the world,” Abdulla Kalban, managing director and chief executive of EGA, told The National.
He said the company’s customers in the UAE bought 10 per cent of the production, its largest single market, and it supplies to more than 60 countries worldwide that make products using aluminium.
Oxford Economics, an economics consultancy, calculated the economic impact of EGA by analysing three types of activity. “Direct impact” is the value of EGA’s own activity and that of UAE companies that make products using EGA’s metal. “Indirect impact” is activity stimulated by the sector’s purchase of goods and services from suppliers within the country. “Induced impact” is the spending of wages earned by workers in the sector in the UAE economy, such as on housing and leisure.
Every Dh1 generated in the aluminium sector was found to create an additional Dh1.26 of activity elsewhere in the economy – a phenomenon economists refer to as the “multiplier effect”.
“The UAE today is considered one of the world’s largest exporters of this resource – one that is critical to a number of other sectors such as aviation, shipping and construction,” said Sultan Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy.
“The Ministry has been working on developing the country’s competitiveness by focusing on economic strategies that diversify sources of income, and drive sustainable growth across a number of industries in order to create job opportunities, develop local capability and encourage innovation.”
The UAE today is considered one of the world’s largest exporters of this resource SULTAN AL MANSOURI Minister of Economy