Thinking of bailing on Dubai? Move quickly before they adopt a new rule

If you are in the UAE and thinking of bailing out on Dubai, as thousands of ex-pats are doing daily- you better move fast, before the Dubai adopts a new rule that has just been implemented in Kuwait. A senior Ministry of Communications (MoC) official in Kuwait just has confirmed that the ministry is working closely with the Ministry of Interior (MoI) on a new plan compelling expatriate residents to pay any outstanding debts before they will be allowed to travel abroad.

Zakariya Mohammed Al-Ansari, the head of the ministry’s Accounting and Commercial Services Department, also flatly rejected the findings of a recent Audit Bureau report which accused the ministry of negligence in collecting debts owed by various corporate and domestic customers. The department head insisted that contrary to the report’s estimate of customers’ debts exceeding KD 120 million, in reality the sum doesn’t exceed KD 9 million.

Al-Ansari said that the department had collected KD 117 million in unpaid debts in 2008 alone, as well as collecting 98 percent of the amount owed to the ministry by local embassies. With the situation in Dubai worsening every day, the chances are they will also adopt this strategy.

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