Dubai is launching a project to build an entertainment and hotel district that is to include the world’s largest shopping mall, Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum said on Saturday.
Plans for the Mall of the World project were originally revealed 18 months ago, helping to trigger a strong rally in Dubai’s real-estate and stock markets.
Saturday’s announcement appeared to indicate that substantial work on the project would now begin, though the statement did not say when construction would be completed, how much it would cost or how it would be financed.
“The project will be built in phases in alignment with the gradual growth of family tourism in Dubai,” said Mohammed Abdullah al-Gergawi, chairman of Dubai Holding, which is Sheikh Mohammed’s personal investment vehicle and is to develop the project.
The latest version of the plans includes construction of a 743,000m2 mall, connected to a theme park, theaters, medical tourism facilities and 100 hotels and serviced apartment buildings with 20,000 rooms.
The complex would be able to host 180 million visitors annually. Seven kilometers of promenades connecting the facilities would be opened to the air during the winter, but covered and air-conditioned during the hot Gulf summer.
Dubai is still recovering from its 2009 debt crisis and the IMF has warned a slew of new real-estate projects could lead to another boom and bust cycle. However, officials say they are able to handle the risks, and a strong economy is helping Dubai’s government-linked firms restructure their debt.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by