Dubai and Abu Dhabi are vastly multicultural cities with a majority of their inhabitants thronging from outside the UAE and still do so regularly.
However, the cost of living in the UAE rose a notch during the first half of 2024, although its quality of life ranking saw a substantial jump, according to a recent survey.
The global database provider Numbeo, put Dubai’s ranking in the cost of living index as having ascended from 138th at the beginning of 2024 to 70th at the end of the first half of 2024 while Abu Dhabi’s rank went up from 164th to 75th in the index during the January-June period.
Numbeo, the world’s major cost of living database, is also a crowd-sourced global database of quality of life data catering to factors such as housing indicators, perceived crime rates, healthcare quality, transport quality, and other statistics.
One of the factors contributing to this increase in the cost of living has been the prevalent inflation. Inflation has also been compounded by global factors since the UAE obtains most of its consumer products from other countries. Petrol prices which have been linked to the international market have increased from Dh2.71 per liter in January to Dh3.22 in May before slipping to Dh3.02 a litre in June.
However, sources have implied that rents in the UAE have been on the rise, mainly in Dubai and Abu Dhabi because of the incursion of foreign professionals and high-net-worth individuals.
A Property Monitor report of May 2024 reveals that rental prices in Dubai have surged by as much as double in some of the existing communities after the pandemic. Specifically, the records from the Dubai Land Department indicate that the total rental registrations to up to the first five months of the year 2024 stood at 255,178 having been registered an incremental of 5.9 % as compared to the prior year.
Data from the Dubai Statistics Centre revealed that inflation in the emirate increase from 109.91 in January to 111.34 in May led by Housing; water, electricity, gas & other fuels; Furnishing & household equipment & other goods; Transport.
Due to its concern over increasing basic food prices and inflation, the UAE Ministry of Economy has placed price controls on nine essential food items namely cooking oil, eggs, dairy, rice, sugar, poultry, lentils, bread, and wheat. This means that retailers require prior from the Ministry if they want to increase the prices.
Quality of living
Both emirates also noted significant improvement in their quality of life score in the first half of 2024. This was due to enhanced purchasing capacity by residents besides offering facilities in health care, education and other sectors to citizens and residents.
According to Numbeo, Abu Dhabi is ranked 17th for the first semester of 2024 in comparison to 54th at the start of the year. Dubai moved up from the 57th rank of 178 cities to the 49th during this period.
On Monday the World Bank published an income categorization of countries for the year 2024-25 that placed UAE among the developed nations of Canada, Japan, the USA, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the West European nations, and Australia as high-income countries.
The government of the UAE has also launched several steps such as the provision of housing for the citizens, and other social support measures in the spheres of healthcare and education for the citizens and residents to enhance the standards of welfare. Also, social programs like job loss insurance positively impacted the employee attitude towards business in the local market.
Moreover, earlier this year the UAE government has declared that mandatory health insurance will be put into action from the next year posing a tremendously positive impact on healthcare and overall quality of life in the UAE.
In the safety context, it has been established that Abu Dhabi remains the safest city globally, followed by Doha and Dubai.
