Thursday, March 5, 2009

Meraas halts work on towers in Dubai

Source : Business Times - 5 Mar 2009

Dubai state property firm Meraas Development, which said last year it was reviewing a US$95-billion real estate project, has halted two tower projects in the emirate, London-based magazine MEED reported.

It said Samsung Engineering and Construction has stopped providing pre-construction services for Meraas’s 1-Dubai tower, while also shelving plans for another high-rise office building, according to an unsourced report on MEED’s website on Tuesday.

Dubai’s property sector is suffering a sharp slowdown after a six-year building boom spurred by its move to allow foreign investors to buy properties and because of buoyant growth in Gulf economies during an oil price rally.

Dubai residential real estate prices have fallen by an average of 25 per cent since a peak in September, Morgan Stanley said last month, adding that some US$263 billion of projects had been cancelled or put on hold in the United Arab Emirates.

State-owned Meraas said in December it was reviewing its US$95-billion Jumeirah Gardens project, launched two months earlier at a Dubai property exhibition.

Last week, Dubai’s Union Properties said it was suspending construction of its US$460 million Formula One theme park due to the financial crisis and the drying up of liquidity from banks.


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