Dubai to invest $8.1 billion in World Expo 2020

If Dubai wins the bid to host World Expo 2020, the emirate will invest AED 30bn ($8.1bn) in new infrastructure, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum told Bloomberg.

“We need to extend maybe the metro, the road infrastructure to the site and doing a lot on the site itself,” Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, head of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee and chairman of Emirates airlines, told Bloomberg in an interview at the Dubai Airshow this week.

The bid announcement is due on November 27, but Dubai has emerged as the frontrunner to host the global event.

When asked about how the money would be raised, Sheikh Ahmed told Bloomberg financing the expenditure “makes sense” and has a “business case” but did not elaborate.

Government forecasts say Dubai’s economy is expected to expand an average 4.6% a year between 2012 and 2015, double the rate of the previous four years, Bloomberg said.

Dubai is competing against three other cities for the bid: Ekaterinburg, Russia; Izmir, Turkey and  Sao Paolo, Brazil.

The winning bid is set to bring 70 million visitors to the emirate and create 277,000 new jobs, the majority of which would be in hospitality and construction.