Question

The United [Arab] Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, is one of the Gulf Cooperation Council members. How does it compare with the other GCC countries in terms of total population and the non-immigrant population as a percentage of total population? How important do you think migration and therefore capital remittances are for each of the countries in the GCC?

Answer 1

Gulf Cooperation Council consists of six members namely, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.

	Population in Millions	Non Immigrant population	% of Nationals	Real GDP Growth 2019 %
UAE	9	1	13%	1.3
Bahrain	2	1	45%	1.8
Saudi Arabia	33	21	62%	0.3
Oman	5	3	57%	0.5
Qatar	3	0.3	11%	0.1
Kuwait	5	1	30%	0.7

Thus UAE's population is second largest amongst the members while its non-immigrant population is one of the lowest at 13% as a percentage of total population.

Thus even though Bahrain has a comparatively higher proportion of nationals, its GDP is one of the greatest amongst the group, whereas UAE has one of the lowest population made up of nationals, which means the capital remittances would be greater, its GDP has grown the second largest. However Qatar also has one of the lowest population of nationalities, but its GDP is one of the lowest in the group. Thus, as the local economy is strong enough, migration plays an important role for growth in the economy such as UAE. However if the local economy is not strong enough, then migration and capital remittances would not be as significant in driving economic growth rate as in the case of Qatar because even though there are capital remittances it would not be utilised as efficiently locally.

Migration and capital remittances are important for all countries as almost all are heavily dependent on oil revenue, and it is important, how they invest the remittances in driving GDP. However, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain don't necessarily need migration as their growth has come in strong enough without heavy migration, they just need efficient capital allocation.

Source: National institute of statistics. GDP data from IMF