UAE to turn Berbera base into civilian aviation hub : The Standard

• Reuters 17th Sep 2019 15:30:00 GMT +0300

The United Arab Emirates no longer plans to establish a military airport in Somaliland and the facility currently being built will be turned into a civilian airport, the region’s president said. Somaliland said last year that the UAE would train military in the semi-autonomous region, part of a deal to host a UAE base in the region. “The Berbera airport which was being built by the UAE and designed to be a military base will become a public airport for civilians,” Muse Bihi Abdi said on Saturday. UAE officials did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

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The UAE began construction of the base in 2017 in the port city of Berbera. Under the terms of the deal, the UAE was to have a presence there for 30 years. Berbera is less than 300 km (190 miles) south of war-torn Yemen, where UAE troops have been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi group since 2015 as part of a Saudi-backed coalition. The UAE, concerned about rising tensions with Iran and Western criticism of the Yemen war, in June scaled down its military presence there.

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Egyptian economy Meanwhile, Egypt expects its economy to grow by an annual rate of eight per cent by 2022 as the government improves the investment climate, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Sunday. “The Egyptian government expects growth to gradually pick up to eight per cent by 2022,” he told a meeting of Arab central bank governors. In July, Madbouly said gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.6 per cent in the 2018/19 fiscal year. Barring the oil industry, Egypt’s economy has struggled to attract foreign investors since the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Madbouli told the central bank governors that the government wanted to “alter the face of private investment to spur growth.” This includes “continued efforts to improve the business climate, especially by simplifying and lowering the cost of -forming companies and expanding new investment zones,” he said.

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United Arab EmiratesUAESomalilandEgyptian economyGDP