International Business Opportunities

India and the Philippines were significant contributors to Abu Dhabi International Airport’s 22.9 per cent year-on-year growth in passenger traffic in the month of August.
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A report released yesterday over the attractiveness to investment of cellular communications markets in different countries, shows a high potential for growth in Asia and in the CIS countries (former Soviet Union).

The ten countries with the highest levels of attractiveness to investment include seven countries in South and Southeast Asia (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan) and three from the CIS (Russia in 5th place, Ukraine in 7th, and Uzbekistan in 9th). […]

Central and Eastern Europe have lost much of their investment potential over the last two years as they have become increasingly saturated in terms of cellular network coverage. So European countries are offering increasingly few opportunities for investors, as the U.S. and Canada are still considered good targets for investment.

The report was carried out by a group of experts from the London Business School, Cambridge University, and the Russian School of Economics. (source: kommersant)

By launching Dubai Outsource Zone (DOZ), Dubai is set to enter in the offshoring market.

Dubai Government, with DOZ, aims to turn the emirate into a knowledge-based economy by 2010, making it a new offshore outsourcing location.
DOZ director, Ismail Al Naqi, says:

“Dubai has made it clear it is not trying to compete with lower-cost destinations. Rather it is aiming to attract the high end of outsourcing and to complement other destinations such as India, Philippines, Germany and Russia and be a back-up centre for disaster recovery, for example”

Industries DOZ is targeting are:
ICT;
media;
biotechnology;
energy.

Over the difference of costs with India, Al Naqi explains:

“DOZ’s cost analysis shows Dubai’s costs to be only 30-35 per cent higher than India’s. And this is for direct costs only - infrastructure, people, telecommunications. When other facts are considered such as the quality of life, connectivity to other parts of the Middle East and the rest of the world, and the quality of infrastructure, the differential is likely to be much smaller.”

Dubai appears to be in

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Gartner, the world’s largest IT research and advisory company, estimates offshore outsourcing spending will surpass $50 billion for information technology, and $24 billion for business process services, by 2007.

According to Tom Lambert, President of The International Centre for Consulting Excellence, about 11 per cent of the total service sector in the US and Europe could be outsourced by 2010, with financial services playing a very important role in the industry.

It is estimated, India, leading country in the global offshoring industry, will face a skill shortage of at least half a million within five years.
Because of that, increasingly companies are looking to new outsourcing destinations such as China, Philippines, Russia, Ireland, Czech Republic and other Eastern Europe countries.

( source )