Dubai's Department of Economic Development (DED) has issued 2,650 new licences for various professional, commercial, industrial and tourism activities in August.

This is a sign of continuing investor confidence in Dubai and new opportunities arising across diverse economic sectors, said a DED press release issued on Sunday.

According to the Business Registration and Licensing (BRL) sector in DED, 65.6 percent of the new licences were professional, 32.2 percent commercial, 1.7 percent related to tourism, and 0.5 percent industry, and together, they created 8,187 jobs in the labour market.

The ‘Business Map’ digital platform of DED, which seeks to reflect the economic realities in Dubai by providing vital data on each licence category including their numbers and distribution on a monthly basis, saw 21,249 business registration and licensing transactions being completed during August 2019.

The outsourced service centres of DED accounted for 15,349 transactions - 72 percent of the total - thus demonstrating their vital role in delivering value-added services to the public in Dubai.

The August 2019 transactions also showed that Trade Name Reservation accounted for 3,452 transactions, while the number of Initial Approvals reached 2,954. The total number of Commercial Permits reached 1,023 in August 2019.

The report showed that Licence Renewal accounted for 8,646 transactions in August 2019, including 4,282 (50 percent) transactions related to Auto Renewal via text messages.

BRL also issued 160 instant licences, which is processed in a single step without the need for either the Memorandum of Association‭ ‬or an existing location for the first year, while the number of DED Trader licences, which allows to conduct business activities on social media, reached 191 in August 2019.

The report also showed that the top nationalities who secured licences in August 2019 were from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Britain, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan and the USA.

The Deira area accounted for the largest share (1,518) of licences issued in August 2019, followed by Bur Dubai (1,129), and Hatta (3).

The top sub-regions, which accounted for 86.7 percent of all the transactions, were: Al Garhoud (15.2 percent), Burj Khalifa (14.4 percent), Oud Al Muteena 3 (14.2 percent), Al Fahidi (8.6 percent), Al Muraqqabat (8.6 percent), Port Saeed (8.2 percent), Oud Metha (7.1 percent), Al Qubaisi (5.7 percent), Al Marar (2.8 percent), and Naif (1.9 percent).

Real estate, leasing and business services accounted for 43.9 percent of the new licences issued in August 2019, according to the distribution of economic activities. This was followed by Trade and repair services (26.7 percent), Community and personal services (8.9 percent), Building and Construction (7.5 percent), Transport, storage and communications (4.5 percent), Hotels group (3.4 percent), Manufacturing (1.5 percent), Financial brokerage (0.9 percent), Health and labour (0.9 percent), "Contracting group" (0.8 percent), Education (0.6 percent), and Agriculture (0.4 percent).

A qualitative leap in evaluating market performance, the Business Map reflects the reality of business movement in Dubai and provides daily updates that help investors to identify opportunities, geographical distribution of business activity and potential areas for expansion, said the press release. – TradeArabia News Service