Focusing the growth in the Middle East ecommerce sector, Dubai has launched its first free Ecommerce zone. It is called as CommerCity.
It is a joint venture between Dubai Airport Free Zone Authority (DAFZA) and wasl Asset Management Group costing around $740 million. 2.1-million square feet free zone will be covered. This will be located near Dubai international airport.
This Commercity will include large quantity of office buildings, an area consisting of cafes, restaurants and art galleries. The motive behind its design is to attract foreign investment who wants to expansion in Middle East and south Asian countries. This will give an exposure to the company’s current and future needs in electronic payments, IT solutions, and logistics and customer care services.
The project completion will be done in 2 phases, and 50% will be completed at each stage. However no specific time frame has been allotted for the same. The aim of the Dubai Commercity is to play operational, organizational and knowledge based role which contribute to the development and building up of a new high class and top end free zone.
To tap the Middle East region ecommerce growth, Commercity is an effort which has expected to reach around $20 billion by 2020 in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It has been speculated that nearly 10% of Dubai’s retail sales will be projected through Ecommerce sector which has expected to reach $54 billion by the end of 2017.
This new FreeZone Commercity has been a new development that has occurs in ecommerce sector’s strings of development. Earlier this year only, online based retailer Souq.com was purchased by Amazon; Noon, an ecommerce website has been created and finally went live.
All these factors have given us an edge that Middle East has now been on the path of development and is adding developments in its strings of emerging new ideas. Middle East has now been targeted as an investment junction as the growth rate here is now considered as fast and consistent.
This will give an opportunity to different ecommerce companies to come forward and invest in Middle East countries.