NO WAY BUT UP

In an exclusive interview, chairman of Dubai’s Danube Group, Rizwan Sajan, outlines why he is confident about a ‘V’ shaped recovery in the UAE, how his company has navigated the Covid-19 crisis and what lies ahead

- AARTI NAGRAJ

As he admits, the chairman and founder of Dubai-based construction and property conglomerate Danube Group is an optimist by nature, and hence it is easy to fathom why he belives that the UAE’s economy will recover rapidly from the Covid-19 crisis. “The UAE is set to witness one of the fastest ‘V’ shaped recoveries in the world from the Covid-19 pandemic due to a number of factors including the way the authorities handled the crisis from day one,” he insists, in a bold prediction. The Dubai-based businessman is confident that before the end of the second quarter of 2021, the situation will bounce back to normal, with the local economy back on track for strong growth.

While one could attribute his sanguine economic outlook to his personality, Sajan stresses that he has solid reasons to back his projection. “If you look back, the UAE recovered faster compared to other economies from all the previous crises they faced in the last three decades, be it the Gulf war or the global financial crisis. And there are practical reasons for this.

The first and foremost is the strong and visionary leadership of the country. Also, from the beginning, the UAE has invested in its future, be it hard or soft infrastructure, technology, systems, processes, people and the global connectivity that helps it to recover fast. It is a future-ready country,” he explains.