Dubai Competitiveness Office is preparing a comprehensive report on the competitiveness of 26 approved projects submitted by 24 government entities in Dubai within the first edition of “Dubai 10X” initiative launched by HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Chairman of the Executive Council, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Dubai Future Foundation.
MAGNiTT, MENA’s leading data platform tracking the region’s startup ecosystem, today released their annual 2018 MENA Venture Investment Report, which provides an in depth analysis of startup funding across the Middle East and North Africa. The report highlights strong growth with a record number of transactions and an increase in total funding across MENA-based startups, up 31% from 2017.
Egypt’s non-oil private sector economy saw only a fractional worsening of operating conditions in December, as new orders dropped at the softest pace in four months. Purchasing activity grew at the fastest rate since May, while employment continued to fall. Input cost inflation eased even further, setting a new record low across the survey history.
Business conditions across Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector showed a further improvement in December, with companies reporting sustained growth in output on the back of rising demand for goods and services. However, expansion was slightly slower than in November and firms showed greater caution towards taking on additional staff. Average prices charged were meanwhile reduced for the fifth time in the past six months amid reports of strong competition and muted cost inflationary pressures. Encouragingly, business confidence towards the outlook reached a five-year high.
The end of 2018 saw a moderation in growth across the UAE’s non-oil private sector, with slower increases in output and new orders recorded. Evidence from the survey suggested that where sales were secured, this was often due to price discounting as output prices fell for the third month running. This was consistent with a general lack of input cost pressure in the non-oil private sector.
Tenable®, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company, released the Measuring and Managing the Cyber Risks to Business Operations Report, an independent study conducted by Ponemon Institute. It found that 60 percent of organizations globally had suffered two or more business-disrupting cyber events — defined as cyber attacks causing data breaches or significant disruption and downtime to business operations, plant and operational equipment — in the last 24 months. Further, the vast majority of respondents (91 percent) had suffered at least one such cyber event in the same time period.
