Dubai, then Doha Most Expensive
Doha second most expensive city in Mideast
Web posted at: 8/27/2009 2:45:52
Source ::: The Peninsula/ By HUDA N V
DOHA: Doha is the second most expensive city in the Arab world, according to a latest study. The USB, one of the world’s leading financial firms, recently released the 14th edition of its ‘Prices and Earnings’ review which has included Doha for the first time in the list of 73 international cities.
Placed in the 39th position in global ratings, Doha is the second most expensive city in the Middle East after Dubai and before Manama. The rating is based on 122 common goods and services. The study looks at the prices of goods and services, and wages and working hours for 14 professionals in 73 cities round the world.
The study reveals that Dubai has surpassed New York and London which were the biggest financial cities in the world. The finical crisis had lead to fluctuation in the rankings of many cities. London which was the second most expensive in the 2006 review plummeted nearly 20 places, landing in the middle of the Western European rankings. Doha is the most expensive city in the world when it comes to a low-class furnished four bedroom flat. With a monthly rent of $4,210, even posh cities like New York ($4,110) and Dubai ($3,950) come after Doha.
However, in high-class four-bedroom apartments, Dubai is one of the most expensive following New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. In Dubai, such apartments cost $7,090, whereas in Doha they cost $5,580 and $ 3,400 in Manama.
The average rent in most local houses in Qatar is $1,650, $2,160 in Dubai and $890in Manama. With this Doha and Dubai rank among the top 10 most expensive cities in terms of average rents.
Expenditure on some of the 122 goods and services in Doha came to $2,006, while in Dubai it was $2,522 and in Manama $1,773.
One of the common features of ‘Prices and Earnings’ is the ‘Big Mac index’, which has been a trusty indicator of how long an average wage-earner has to work in order to afford that universal meal in each city. This type of comparison is ideal for products that can be purchased around the world in the same quality — products such as an iPod.
People in Doha had to work more as per this index. To earn a Big Mac, people here had to work 34 minutes, whereas in Dubai people could earn the snack with 18 minutes of work and in Manama with 25 minutes of work. To buy an 8 GB iPod nano, Doha residents would have to labour for 35 minutes, compared to 20 minutes and 23 minutes for those in Dubai and Manama, respectively.
While Zurich in Switzerland paid its employees the most (more than $22 an hour), Dubai paid an average of just $10.10, Doha $5.40 and Manama $6.30. The lowest pay was in Mumbai, where workers received an average of just $1.20 an hour.
Food prices are the highest in Japan, at $710, and Geneva ($660) based on 39 standard western food items. In Doha, food cost $379, in Dubai $426 and in Manama $341. Mumbai had the cheapest foods, costing $153.
Taxi prices were the cheapest in Doha at $3.69 for a five-kilometre ride. In Dubai, the same ride cost $4.27 and in Manama $10.61.
Meanwhile, an evening three-course-meal in a good restaurant in Doha cost $59, ranking it the fourth most expensive place, close behind Dubai where such a meal cost $60.
Also, for a short break, which includes an overnight stay in a first-class hotel and various other services, the city could be the second most expensive after Tokyo. A break in Doha and in London cost $1,000 each, following Tokyo, where it can cost $1,130.
The ultra-liberal economic policies of Qatar and Dubai have created an extremely favourable environment for foreign companies and workers here. However, employees in Middle East work more than their counterparts in other countries. Workers in Doha, Dubai and Manama racked up longer hours, averaging 2,210 per year, 308 more than the global average.
Maggie O’Farrell and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Maggie O’Farrel’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is also a book club pick, but oh, what a pick! I remember somewhere reading a review; I might never have picked this book up if I hadn’t needed to read it for the club. And oh, what I might have missed!
It’s like the scariest book ever written, scary in a Margaret Atwood kind of way, a reminder that women have not had rights for very long, and that those rights are still very fragile. When economies go bottoms-up, when unemployment begins rising, women are often the first to suffer, and women’s rights the first to go. In hard times, men will be preferred hirings, because they have families to support, laws to “protect” women are passed, especially laws which “protect” her finances, meaning gives the power of the money management to some man to do for her, or “protect” her person by requiring that some man accompany her to keep her from dangers. Protection = control. It keeps some smart, thinking women submissive to men who are in every way their inferior.
In Vanishing, Maggie O’Farrel writes of such a woman, Esme Lennox, who is a fey spirit, born in India, with the eyes of an artist. While her “good” sister Kitty obeys the rules, walks the straight and narrow path, Esme is messier. As she grows to adolescence, her eccentricity and her rebellion against the constricts of the life in turn-of-the-century Scotland chafe, she yearns for more room to breathe, intellectually, socially, as her family, her community and her society continues to pressure her to conform.
One of the key events in the book is the death of Esme’s baby brother, of typhoid fever. Abandoned, Esme sits holding her dead brother’s body for three days until her family returns (the baby-keeper also died and the other employees deserted while Esme’s family was away). Esme is devastated, but the focus is on her mother, who is wrought with guilt and isolates herself, and Esme, only a little girl, is forbidden to even say her beloved baby brother’s name. Part of what plays a huge role in this book is society, expectations, and all that is hidden and unspoken – as Esme becomes, a family secret, locked away for sixty years.
Their grandmother swept into the room ‘Kitty,’ there was an unaccustomed smile on her face, ‘stir yourself. You have a visitor.’
Kitty put down her needle. ‘Who?’
Their mother appeared behind the grandmother. ‘Kitty,’ she said ‘quickly put that away. He’s here, he’s downstairs . . . ‘
. . . .
Esme watched from the window-seat as her mother started fiddling with Kitty’s hari, tucking it behind her ears, then releasing it. . . . . Ishbel turned and, catching sight of Esme at the window, said ‘You, too. Quickly now.’
Esme took the stairs slowly. She had no desire to meet one of Kitty’s suitors. They all seemed the same to her – nervous men with over-combed hair, scrubbed hands and pressed shirts. They came and drank tea, and she and Kitty were expected to talk to them while their mother sat like an umpire in a chair across the room. The whole thing made Esme want to burst into honesty, to say, let’s forget this charade, do you want to marry her or not?
She dawdled on the landing, looking at a grim, grey-skied watercolour of the Fife coast. But her grandmother appeared in the hall below. ‘Esme!’ she hissed, and Esme clattered down the stairs.
In the drawing room, she plumped down in a chair with high arms in the corner. She wound her ankles round its polished legs and eyed the suitor. The same as ever. Perhaps a little more good-looking than some of the others. Blond hair, an arrogant forehead, fastidious cuffs. He was asking Ishbel something about the roses in a bowl on the table. Esme had to repress the urge to roll her eyes. Kitty was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, pouring tea into a cup, a blush creeping up her neck.
Esme began playing the game she often played with herself at times like this, looking over the room and working out how she might get round it without touching the floor. She could climb from the sofa to the low table and, from there, to the fender stool. Along that, and then –
She realized her mother was loooking at her, saying something.
‘What was that?” Esme said.
‘James was addressing you.’ her mother said, and the slight flare of her nostrils meant, Esme knew, that she’d better behave or there would be trouble later.
As with many inconvenient women, Esme ends up committed at a loony-bin, and sixty years later, is released into the custody of a grand-niece who never even knew Esme existed.
The thoughts, trials and escapades of three women, Esme, her sister Kitty, and Iris, the grand-niece, intertwine through out the book, and the picture is cloudy at first, blurry, shifting, fragmented The pattern becomes more and more clear as the three threads of thought are woven – ever more tightly – together.
I could not put this book down. Finding out how the picture came together became more important than checking my messages, my blog, or fixing dinner. It was compelling, and resulted in a quick and unforgettable read.
Economic Turnaround Slow
Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in America, and one of the humblest, has written an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times (you can read the entire piece by clicking here) on the tiny signs of economic upturn and what they might forecast for the near and medium future. It makes fascinating reading – solutions come at a cost, and he spells out the costs.
One blogger jumps from this to forecast a turnaround in the real estate market. Not so fast, I think. There is a huge demographic factor, a huge bulge of the population stepping out of the productive work-force and into retirement, a population which has largely lived large – for today – with little thought to the retirement years.
Those who planned, and squirreled away their monies into investments, into businesses – have also been hit hard. Turnarounds take time, and even so, there is a cost. Not all will recover what they have lost.
Many of this aging bulge will be paring down their expectations and paring down their lifestyles. They will be paring down their spending, except for health care. I don’t think we have a clue what that is going to look like.
The Greenback Effect
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: August 18, 2009
Omaha
IN nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society. Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.
The butterfly effect reaches into the financial world as well. Here, the United States is spewing a potentially damaging substance into our economy — greenback emissions.
To be sure, we’ve been doing this for a reason I resoundingly applaud. Last fall, our financial system stood on the brink of a collapse that threatened a depression. The crisis required our government to display wisdom, courage and decisiveness. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve and key economic officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations responded more than ably to the need.
They made mistakes, of course. How could it have been otherwise when supposedly indestructible pillars of our economic structure were tumbling all around them? A meltdown, though, was avoided, with a gusher of federal money playing an essential role in the rescue.
The United States economy is now out of the emergency room and appears to be on a slow path to recovery. But enormous dosages of monetary medicine continue to be administered and, before long, we will need to deal with their side effects. For now, most of those effects are invisible and could indeed remain latent for a long time. Still, their threat may be as ominous as that posed by the financial crisis itself.
To understand this threat, we need to look at where we stand historically. If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion. Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory.
Because of this gigantic deficit, our country’s “net debt” (that is, the amount held publicly) is mushrooming. During this fiscal year, it will increase more than one percentage point per month, climbing to about 56 percent of G.D.P. from 41 percent. Admittedly, other countries, like Japan and Italy, have far higher ratios and no one can know the precise level of net debt to G.D.P. at which the United States will lose its reputation for financial integrity. But a few more years like this one and we will find out.
An increase in federal debt can be financed in three ways: borrowing from foreigners, borrowing from our own citizens or, through a roundabout process, printing money. Let’s look at the prospects for each individually — and in combination.
You can read the rest HERE
Apartment Building Coming Down
Expats have their own shorthand, we understand one another when we talk about Doha, although the locals would not have a clue what we are talking about. So I will tell you that this apartment building was newly built at-the-end-of-Indian-Crafts-Street, you know, where the Christmas shop is – and those expats who have lived in Doha for a while will know exactly where that is.
They never even put the glass windows and balcony doors in – at some point, they must have gotten word that all this will come down for the new Dohaland, or Heart of Doha – a revival of the historical district of Qatar.
I won’t complain. I love what they did for the Suq al Waqif, which has been reinvigorated by the new life injected with the restauraunts and cafes. The same shops line the interiors, only now they have more and varied customers.
it just seems like there might be more co-ordination. This apartment building should not have even been started. I hate waste.
Cops Find Motorists Beating Point System in Qatar
Motorists trading penalty points
Web posted at: 8/14/2009 7:42:18
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Some motorists have hit upon a novel idea to escape being penalised for traffic violations under the current points system, which many find deterring.
They look for people with a valid driver’s licence who are willing to get the points transferred to their name for a fee.
There is no dearth of those who are offering such services and they, obviously, are low-income foreign workers, reports Al Sharq. The going rate for a penal point transfer is around QR100.
Since traffic violations are recorded against the number plates of the vehicles, traffic officials ask the owners who was driving the vehicle when the violation took place. All an owner needs to do is provide the name of the “paid volunteer” with his driver’s licence.
“This is a new phenomenon which has come to light after the traffic authorities put stringent rules in place to check violations,” said the daily.
The points system was introduced after the authorities realised the rate of accidents was not coming down despite hefty penalties being slapped on violators. Cash-rich motorists were undeterred as they gladly paid heavy fines for violations.
But in the current points system, a motorist accumulating 14 points for traffic violations in a year can see his driver’s licence suspended for three months.
The next year, if he accumulates 12 points, his licence is suspended for two months, while in the third year it is suspended for a month if the points add up to 10. In the fourth year, a motorist needs to join a driving school and undergo tests afresh to seek a driver’s licence if he accumulates 10 points for violations as his existing licence is revoked.
According to Al Sharq, a number of people have been calling for doing away with the points system and reintroducing the old penalty system.
Jumping traffic lights attracts the maximum points at seven, while wrong parking of a car or breaching the speed limit can see some three points credited into the driver’s account. Minor violations attract fewer points.
Doha Hazard
I’m driving along, getting ready to get in the right turn lane, when all of a sudden ahead of me, I can see a change in grade: Roadworks. Only in my lane. Here is the hazard – I can get in the lane now, and bump along, or I can stay in my curent lane and switch later, but I don’t know how many other drivers are adopting that strategy, and if I don’t make the right turn, I have to go many blocks out of my way. I signal and get in the raw, bumpy lane.
There just isn’t any good time to do roadworks. Some of the roads have serious potholes, many of the side roads have other serious defects. They have to be fixed, but oh the mess, the inconvenience. It’s the same in Kuwait, it’s the same in Seattle. I think of the bureaucrats who have to raise the funds (at least in Kuwait and Doha, it’s not taxes!), hire the companies, make the decisions and bear the howling complaints of the inconvenienced while the necessary work takes place.
At least on this day traffic is flowing smoothly and drivers are making allowances for one another. Things could be a lot worse.
Qatari Divorcees and Widows More Likely to Marry
This caught my eye for a couple reasons – one of which is that Qatar has the second largest divorce rate after Kuwait. Second, while it is mentioned in the article, it is not mentioned at the end that the women have other options in Kuwait and Qatar, are more able to care for themselves financially, and are not bound to stay in unhappy marriages for reasons of financial dependency.
It is delightful to think that one unhappy marriage while young will not doom a still-young woman to a life of celibacy. 🙂
More Qataris tying the knot with divorcees and widows
Web posted at: 8/11/2009 2:41:41
Source ::: The Peninsula / By MOHAMED SAEED
DOHA: Qatar has the second largest divorce rate in the Gulf region after Kuwait, but a welcome development has been that now an increasing number of citizens prefer to marry divorcees and young widows.
Qatar being a conservative society, marrying divorcees and widows has been a taboo of sorts.So, since the largest number of divorcees is in the age group of 20 to 29 years, their remarriage is a healthy sign.
In 1986, for example, divorcees under 20 years of age accounted for 15 percent of the total. Their proportion has been declining and was down to 6.4 percent in 2007.
Studies conducted by the Permanent Population Committee (PPC) show the number of marriages breaking up in the country has risen from just 308 in 1986 to nearly a 1,000 in 2007.
And although the population of locals has also gone up in this period, the rates of marriage and divorce have risen at a larger rate than the population increase.
It is also interesting to note that nearly 85 percent of weddings ending into divorce are first marriages. In other words, a husband taking a second, third or even fourth wife has never been the cause for a wedlock to end.
With women having increasing access to education and employment, the number of married Qatari females asking for divorce (‘khula’ in Arabic) has been on the rise. The share of such divorces in the total is on an average between 16 and 23 percent.
The studies note that financial independence of educated women has much to do with the rise in the phenomenon.
And as for male citizens marrying young divorcees and widows, the number of such marital knots had increased to nearly 300 in 2007 as compared to barely 29 in 1986.
Among the Arab countries, Egypt and Syria have the lowest divorce rates, suggest the studies.
They point to erosion of social values, modern living, fading influence of families, as the major factors behind the rising incidence of divorce in Qatar.
Prickly Pear Becomes Cash Crop
The first time I ever saw these prickly pears was in Tunisia, where they were a by-product of huge prickly pear fences that kept roaming sheep, goats, even cattle out of the living areas. The prickly pear fences were everywhere. Some people made jam out of the fruit, but now, the fruit is bringing in big bucks to Moroccans.
To read the entire story, please click BBC News Africa
By Sylvia Smith
BBC News, Sbouya, Morocco
It is just after dawn in the hills above the Moroccan hamlet of Sbouya and a group of women are walking through the thousands of cactus plants dotted about on the hillside, picking ripe fruits whenever they spot the tell-tale red hue.
But these woman are not simply scraping a living out of the soil.
The cactus, previously eaten as a fruit or used for animal feed, is creating a minor economic miracle in the region thanks to new health and cosmetic products being extracted from the ubiquitous plant.
This prickly pocket of the semi-arid south of the country around the town of Sidi Ifni is known as Morocco’s cactus capital.
It is blessed with the right climate for the 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) of land that is being used to produce prodigious numbers of succulent Barbary figs.
Every local family has its own plot and, with backing from the Ministry of Agriculture, the scheme to transform small scale production into a significant industry industry is under way.
Some 12m dirhams ($1.5m) have been pledged to build a state-of-the-art factory that will help local farmers process the ripe fruits.
The move is expected to help workers keep pace with the requirements of the French cosmetics industry which is using the cactus in increasing numbers of products.
Lucrative
Izana Marzouqi, a 55-year-old member of the Aknari cooperative, says people from the region grew up with the cactus and did not realise its true benefit.
“Demand for cactus products has grown and that it is because the plant is said to help with high blood pressure and cancer. The co-operative I belong to earns a lot of money selling oil from the seeds to make anti-ageing face cream.”
I know I have seen these growing in Kuwait – are they growing in Qatar, too?
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