The growing cities of the Gulf are stretching national resources to breaking point. Is there an alternative model?
Mankind passed a milestone last year. For the first time in history, more people were living in cities than in the surrounding countryside, according to the UN Population Division. Our species has officially become an ur....
Hydrogen derived from natural gas is being proposed as a clean fuel. Can it deliver on such high promises?
THE world’s biggest hydrogen power plant could soon be coming to Abu Dhabi.
The government-funded firm Masdar continues to blaze a trail in renewable energy research. Even at a time when investors are growing wary of high-ri....
Improving the standard of written Arabic is a matter not just for the literati but for social development
Speaking in 1940, Ahmad Numan, who would later become one of the luminaries of the Yemeni revolution, said: “We define ignorance as a lack of knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, grammar, morphology… Our institutions have over the pas....
Banks in the Gulf should be encouraged to consolidate while they can
As months go, September was a reasonable one for mergers and acquisitio...
A reserve currency is one that is held by foreign governments or institutions as part of their reserves. It is usually the currency used to price goods...
A new class of chemical solvent is revolutionising industrial processes by lowering costs and increasing production
Here’s a puzzle. What do...
As the Central Region’s agricultural sector enters a period of uncertainty, new developments are poised to fill the gap
Saudi Arabia’s Central Region is the powerhouse of...
Three years on, has Saudi Arabia’s WTO membership made any difference to its economic development?
In 2005, Saudi Arabia joined the World Trade Organisation – the culmina...
When it was recaptured by Ibn Saud in 1902, Riyadh was a small mud-built fortress town in the Nejd, the high desert plateau at the heart of present-day Saudi Arabia. It was a choice prize...
The news on property became bleaker this week. HSBC, an international bank, said that in October alone the prices of residential property dropped by 4 per cent in...
ABU DHABI claims to have a huge budget surplus and expects its economy to grow a robust 17 per cent this year. Yet officials have admitted they are struggling to ...
Despite a still buoyant market at home Bank Muscat is looking beyond Oman to expand
As befits a bank that is already the biggest fish in a small ...
Abu Dhabi is attracting international media to set up shop, but how will they cope with tough press laws?
SOME of the toughest press laws in the ...