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• 
  Retirement creates multibillion-dollar opportunity for region

  16 June 2026

  

   

  The GCC has long relied on government pension schemes and employer gratuity payments to provide for retirement. As workforces expand, demographics shift and expatriate communities put down longer-term roots, those arrangements are coming under growing strain. A new report from BlackRock argues that addressing those pressures represents one of the region’s more consequential economic policy opportunities – not only for individuals, but also for the depth and sophistication of its financial markets.

  The asset manager’s recently published Read on Retirement: GCC 2026 study, based on a survey of 1,000 working individuals across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, depicts a workforce that is motivated but structurally underserved.

  In the UAE, the survey finds that 78% of workers feel positive about their current financial position. Yet 59% say financial worries prevent them from planning for the future, and 58% worry about outliving their savings. Retirement preparedness stands at 67% among UAE nationals, underpinned by public pension provision, but falls to 46% among expatriates.

  Three-quarters of respondents say they have begun preparing for retirement. Yet only 24% are contributing to a pension or long-term savings plan. The remainder are saving through cash, gold and property – assets that may preserve value but are not designed to generate sustainable retirement income. The survey indicates that 49% of respondents hold savings in cash, 40% in gold and 18% in property, suggesting a substantial share of potential long-term capital is held in short-term or non-productive forms.

  “What we see in the data is a clear retirement knowledge gap, not an intention gap. People are doing the right things in principle, but they don’t yet have access to the types of investment frameworks that can deliver sustainable retirement outcomes,” says Kashif Riaz, head of Middle East financial markets advisory at BlackRock.

  Good timing

  Several factors have converged to make retirement reform a timely priority. The UAE’s population is young compared with other developed markets, which provides a wide window for building long-duration savings pools.

  “It is a sweet spot right now – a very young population – and like all other geographies in the world, populations age over time,” Riaz says. “It is best to solve the problem structurally when the population is young and you have more workers than retirees.”

  The character of the expatriate workforce is also changing. A growing proportion of overseas workers is making long-term residency decisions, shifting their financial planning accordingly.

  “The demand for retirement solutions has grown much broader as expatriates make this their home for the long term,” Riaz notes. “Rather than conducting their banking, investing and primary real estate activity in their home countries with the intent to return, that is all happening here.”

  Reform is already under way. The UAE has introduced an alternative end-of-service benefit framework allowing employers to shift from the traditional, unfunded gratuity model – where liabilities sit on employer balance sheets and assets remain uninvested – to funded, defined-contribution structures managed by licensed providers. The Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC’s) Employee Workplace Savings scheme is the most developed operational example. The private sector is beginning to follow.

  “Historically, in this region, only the largest or most multinational employers offered employee savings funds, but that is spreading,” Riaz says. “More insurance companies and asset managers are looking to develop the infrastructure to offer retirement solutions. We expect that to accelerate.”

  Financial markets

  For stakeholders in the region’s financial centres and for institutional investors, the big opportunity is what a well-established retirement system would mean for regional markets. The DIFC, Abu Dhabi Global Market and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Financial District have each invested substantially in regulatory and institutional capacity to attract and manage long-term capital. A domestically generated pool of retirement savings would provide durable demand for the instruments and markets they host, spanning listed equities, sukuk, private credit and infrastructure funds.

  “The bigger and more vibrant a retirement system in a country, the bigger and more vibrant that country’s financial markets will also be,” Riaz says.

  There is a precedent. Australia’s superannuation system, built over three decades, is widely credited with transforming the depth and sophistication of Australian capital markets.

  For regional fixed income, a domestic retirement pool would create a durable base of long-duration buyers for government and corporate sukuk issuances that currently depend heavily on international appetite. For listed equities, it would deepen liquidity on bourses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. And for infrastructure, it would provide precisely the patient capital the growing regional PPP pipeline requires.

  Favourable conditions

  The retirement survey findings suggest unusually favourable demand conditions for reform. More than 90% of both UAE nationals and expatriates find defined-contribution workplace savings schemes appealing, with similar proportions indicating they would participate if such schemes were available. The main barriers are structural and informational rather than attitudinal. Only 13% of expatriates and 21% of nationals report confidence in understanding the retirement savings options available to them, while 92% say they would save more if given better incentives.

  With 56% of respondents planning to increase their retirement savings, the case for directing that capital into more productive long-term channels is clear.

  “By expanding access to funded, professionally managed workplace savings schemes, the UAE can not only strengthen financial outcomes for individuals, but also mobilise significant pools of domestic capital, allowing people’s savings to grow alongside the economy they are helping to build,” Riaz says.

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  Colin Foreman
• 
  Gulf liquidity outpaces Syria’s financial reconnection

  16 June 2026

  

   

  Syria has the capital it needs to begin rebuilding. What it lacks is a banking system capable of moving that money at scale, and through 2026, the gap between the availability and mobility of funds has set the ceiling on recovery.

  The capital itself is overwhelmingly Gulf and Turkish, deployed along clear lines rather than in a scramble. The $216bn rebuild estimated by the World Bank in its October 2025 damage assessment has room for several principals, and so far they are not competing for the same ground.

  Qatar’s UCC Holding anchors two of the largest commitments: a $7bn power generation programme and a $4bn rebuild of Damascus International airport, both under contract since late 2025. The consortiums lean heavily on Turkish contractors, Cengiz and Kalyon among them.

  Saudi Arabia’s package, announced in Damascus on 7 February, tilts to infrastructure and services: a SR7.5bn ($2bn) phased rebuild of Aleppo’s airports through the newly launched Elaf Investment Fund, and an STC fibre-optic and datacentre build worth more than SR3bn ($800m).

  Regional diplomacy is taking precedence over the commercial carve-up: Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman agreed in Riyadh in early February to coordinate on Syrian reconstruction.

  Abu Dhabi’s political embrace came more slowly than Riyadh’s or Doha’s – out of caution over the Islamist-led government– but the UAE’s major ports groups moved decisively.

  Dubai’s DP World signed for Tartous in July 2025 and its 30-year concession went operational in mid-November. AD Ports followed on 6 November with a $22m purchase of 20% of the Latakia container terminal – run by France’s CMA CGM – which handles over 95% of Syria’s container volumes.

  The wider UAE play has since broadened amid the US-Iran conflict in the Gulf, during which Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa repeatedly voiced solidarity with the UAE.

  In May, Dubai stepped up institutionally. Investment Corporation of Dubai managing director Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Shaibani met Al-Sharaa to discuss channelling UAE capital into real estate, tourism and financial services, while Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills presented plans for two urban schemes in Damascus and Latakia, with a reported budget of $50bn.

  Syria’s railway establishment has meanwhile signed a framework with the Latakia terminal’s operators to study moving containers by rail to dry ports at Adra, Hisyah and Aleppo – the first thread connecting a Gulf-invested port to the inland network.

  Certification is key

  Saudi Arabia and Qatar cleared Syria’s $15.5m World Bank arrears in mid-2025, restoring its eligibility for grants. International financial institutions are reciprocating and returning, but cautiously – and not with a view to driving cash volume.

  The World Bank portfolio comprises 10 grant-funded projects worth just over $1bn over three years. The approvals so far are foundational: a $146m electricity grant restoring transmission lines and 400kV interconnections with Turkiye and Jordan; $225m across two grants for water and health; and $20m for public financial management.

  Transport is next in the queue rather than in hand. Syrian Transport Minister Yarub Badr said in June that Syria is seeking World Bank grants of between $65m and $200m for railway rehabilitation, to restore a transit corridor that reportedly moved up to 115,000 trucks a year between the Turkish and Jordanian borders before 2011.

  Broader financing has not followed, however. The IMF’s February mission extended no loan programme, nor was lending discussed, despite the fund noting tight fiscal management and a 2025 budget surplus.

  The IMF, and the World Bank alongside it, named the blockage: a banking sector that needs rehabilitating, central bank independence yet to be built, and restricted banking access still obstructing wider recovery.

  Gulf backers, for their part, can commit capital in a signing ceremony, but they cannot readily push it through a system only beginning to reconnect to the outside world.

  Piecemeal reopening

  A few key developments have occurred. In November 2025, the central bank (pictured) sent its first Swift message in 14 years to the US Federal Reserve, and its dormant account there was reactivated. Visa and Mastercard processing then resumed in May after a 15-year hiatus.

  These networks were never the key constraint, however. Correspondent banks must agree to clear Syrian transactions – and many institutions will likely continue to hold back on compliance and financial-crime grounds until proposed reforms are in place.

  The moves by foreign banks have been expectedly thin as a result, and Doha has led. Qatar National Bank’s Syrian unit – a legacy presence that rode out the war – became the first to switch card acceptance on, while Qatar’s Estithmar Holding has taken a 49% stake in Syria’s Shahba Bank, becoming the sole new foreign equity entry into the sector so far.

  The pound, trading near £Syr13,700 to the dollar, still sits slightly weaker than it did in 2024 – the last year of the old regime.

  The fragility of the machinery showed again in May, when Al-Sharaa moved central bank governor Abdulkader Husrieh – who had overseen the Swift reconnection – to the ambassadorship to Canada; instead installing Safwat Raslan, the head of the state reconstruction fund, as his successor.

  Some analysts read it as a sign of tension within the leadership over monetary policy and governance. It also flashed a warning: an institution the IMF wants independent had just changed hands at the president’s discretion.

  At a June conference, the new governor pledged “institutional work and well-studied planning” with no “improvised or unilateral decisions”, defining himself against the tenure he replaced.

  Raslan’s first measures constituted delays and institutional loosening. He reversed a Husrieh restriction that had confined the banknote changeover to bank branches – readmitting exchange companies and money-transfer firms – and extended the exchange deadline to the end of July. It marked the third such extension of a window first set at 90 days from the 1 January launch, with the original deadline having slipped by four months.

  Conditional funding

  The cashflow blockage is moulding Damascus’s financing strategy: take the institutions’ endorsement, but decline their direct lending, and lean on funding with fewer strings.

  Rather than qualifying for an IMF programme and accepting its conditions, it is routing donor money through the Syrian Development Fund, which is now run by the man just made central bank governor – concentrating the reconstruction purse and monetary authority in one pair of hands.

  The approach spares Syria a debt overhang, but it also leaves reconstruction dependent on Gulf commitments that arrive at the pace of politics rather than as drawable finance.

  The near-term tests are already dated. The banknote changeover – at 63% as of early June – must close by 31 July, and the banking reforms specified by the IMF must be implemented.

  If both hold, the pledged billions will gain a financial system to land in. If either slips, Syria’s reconstruction remains a stack of signed announcements waiting on the financial machinery to catch up.

  ---

  This month’s special report on Syria also includes:

  > PROJECTS: Momentum builds for Syrian projects
  > OIL & GAS: Activity ramps up in Syria’s oil and gas sector
  > CONSTRUCTION: Prospects improve for Levant construction

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  John Bambridge
• 
  Jordan consolidates as deeper reforms lag

  16 June 2026

  

   

  The past 12 months have tested whether a technocratic Jordanian government installed to address the country’s creeping fiscal crisis can hold the line while the region around it convulses.

  On that narrow measure, it has largely succeeded, though more by adhering to an inherited programme than by breaking new ground. The question of whether Amman can move beyond budget discipline into structural reform remains open.

  The most consequential developments of the past year have spoken more to Jordan’s dependence on external capital than to any decisive shift in domestic policy.

  The fiscal line

  When King Abdullah II appointed Jafar Hassan prime minister in September 2024, he installed a figure who had served as his chief of staff and, earlier, as deputy prime minister for economic affairs, with a specific brief to cut public debt. The choice put fiscal credibility in the chair.

  Hassan inherited a wide fiscal gap. The overall government deficit stood at 7.3% of GDP in 2024, with gross public debt at 82% of GDP and the IMF programme targeting a reduction below 80% by 2028. Growth came in at 2.6% in 2024 and is projected at 2.7% in both 2025 and 2026 – providing little support to consolidation efforts.

  The deficit is narrowing – the IMF projects 6.3% of GDP in 2025 and 5.4% in 2026 – on the back of concrete revenue measures: higher taxes on electric vehicles and e-cigarettes, the deferral of a planned customs-tariff cut, and the collection of tax arrears. Losses at the National Electric Power Company (Nepco), the state-owned single buyer, were held to 1.1% of GDP in 2024, against an expected 1.3%.

  Much of that 2024 performance, though, preceded Hassan’s September appointment, and the consolidation is, in that sense, the programme’s trajectory rather than a break attributable to the new government. A March 2026 directive curbing government vehicle use and freezing official foreign travel – tightened as the regional conflict strained the budget and extended through year-end – speaks to the active restraint being applied.

  The discipline is real, but it is the plumbing of the public finances – revenue, tariffs, arrears, loss containment – not the structural reform of the economy.

  The harder reforms

  The reforms that would lift growth and create jobs have gone virtually untouched. Labour market flexibility, stronger competition, and higher female and youth participation have recurred as priorities through successive IMF reviews but have run up against public-sector privilege and entrenched interests.

  The resulting stagnation shows in the numbers. Growth, projected at 2.7% through 2026, sits well short of what the Economic Modernisation Vision demands: a doubling of GDP by 2033 – implying sustained growth at roughly twice the current rate – in order to create one million jobs.

  The labour market is where the failure is sharpest, and where a narrower deficit changes nothing. Unemployment among Jordanians fell to 21.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025, the lowest since early 2020, but barely changed from 21.4% the previous quarter.

  Within that is a widening gender split: male unemployment fell a full point year on year to 17.2%, while among Jordanian women it rose to 34.8%, up 2.6 points. The modernisation plan promises the opposite – a doubling of female labour force participation from 14% to 28% by 2033, from a base among the lowest in the world.

  The distance between that participation target and the worsening female jobless rate illustrates how far the structural agenda still has to travel.

  Gulf capital and the Aqaba corridor

  With domestic reform slow, Amman leans on external capital to meet its infrastructure needs and stimulate the economy – though even that is faltering. Foreign direct investment ran at $1.3bn in the first three quarters of 2024, or 3.3% of GDP, down from $1.6bn a year earlier, and eased further through 2025.

  The most strategically significant deal of 2026 binds Jordan to a bet on regional logistics: the April signing with the UAE of a $2.3bn agreement to build the 360-kilometre Aqaba Port Railway, structured as a 50/50 joint venture.

  The rail project was first signed in September 2024 and sits within a broader $5.5bn investment framework agreed in 2023. MEED understands that the first-section construction contract is now being finalised and second-section bids are under evaluation, with financial close expected in early 2027.

  The Jordanian half is held by the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company, Arab Potash, the Government Investments Management Company and the Social Security Investment Fund. On the UAE side are Abu Dhabi sovereign investment platform L’Imad Holding, with Etihad Rail as the venture’s executing arm.

  The line will carry around 16 million tonnes of freight a year – some 13 million tonnes of phosphate and 2.6 million tonnes of potash – from the mines at Shidiya and Ghor Al-Safi to Aqaba’s terminals.

  The corridor is designed to extend north from Aqaba toward Amman, Syria and Turkey, and south to Saudi Arabia, positioning Aqaba – Jordan’s sole port – as a Red Sea logistics node at a time of acute concern over supply-chain chokepoints.

  For the UAE, the northward reach is the point. Abu Dhabi has moved over the past year to control Syria’s Mediterranean coast – DP World took a 30-year, $800m concession at Tartus; AD Ports took a stake in the container terminal at Latakia – and a rail line running from the Red Sea towards the Syrian border would knit those positions into a corridor from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. For Jordan, it is inward investment, lower export costs and a potential jobs source.

  Dependence on external finance is a standing caveat, however. Jordanian projects have stalled at this stage before, conflict or no conflict: the estimated $2.6bn expansion of the refinery at Zarqa, 25 kilometres northeast of the capital, has been stuck over financing since bids were received in 2021.

  The planned National Water Carrier desalination scheme – targeting financial close in July 2026 at a capital cost estimated at $4.3bn – is the bellwether to watch. If that moves on timeline or terms, the rail scheme may well follow.

  Near-term outlook

  The next two years point to continued consolidation under the IMF programme, Gulf-backed infrastructure edging towards financial close and growth holding near 3% at best.

  Hassan’s test will be to not simply hold the line his predecessors had already drawn, but to advance the structural reforms – labour market flexibility, competition, female participation – that carry a political price and that consolidation cannot substitute for.

  Those reforms have stalled for a decade under governments with more room than this one. Whether Hassan’s administration can deliver what its better-placed predecessors did not is the question that will decide whether the headline growth rate ever moves.

  ---

  This month’s special report on Jordan also includes:

  > BANKING: Caution governs Jordanian bank lending
  > POWER & WATER: Record investment drives Jordan’s utilities market
  > CONSTRUCTION: Prospects improve for Levant construction 

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  John Bambridge
• 
  Siemens Energy to supply turbines for Taweelah C plant

  16 June 2026

  Germany’s Siemens Energy has announced it will supply gas and steam turbines for the 2.6GW Taweelah C independent power producer (IPP) project in Abu Dhabi.

  The project will be the third power plant at the Taweelah site to be equipped by Siemens Energy.

  The company’s scope of supply includes three gas turbines, two steam turbines, five generators and auxiliary systems for the combined-cycle power plant.

  In May, MEED exclusively revealed that a consortium comprising Saudi Arabia’s Al-Jomaih Energy & Water Company and Singapore-based Sembcorp Industries had been selected to develop the project.

  The consortium signed a power-purchase agreement earlier this month to develop the project alongside Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa).

  China Energy Engineering Corporation is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor.

  Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) will be the sole procurer of the electricity generated by the plant.

  The new facility is intended to provide greater flexibility to the power system, support grid stability and facilitate the integration of renewable energy into Abu Dhabi’s electricity network.

  The plant is also designed to enable the possible future deployment of carbon capture and storage technology, supporting the UAE’s target of achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

  Karim Amin, member of the executive board of Siemens Energy, said the project will include “the first HL-class gas turbine in the UAE”.

  The company said the SGT5-9000HL gas turbines and SST5-5000 steam turbines will be produced in Berlin and Muelheim in Germany.

  The SGen5-3000W and SGen5-2000P generators will be manufactured in Charlotte in the US.

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  Mark Dowdall
• 
  Dubai to award $15bn of Al-Maktoum airport contracts this year

  16 June 2026

  Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP) will award contracts worth over AED55bn ($15bn) by the end of this year for construction works at Al-Maktoum International airport.

  According to a statement published by the Emirates News Agency (Wam), the projects slated for contract awards include “the substructure works for the Western Passenger Terminal, the fourth aircraft concourse building, the automated people mover (APM) system and the baggage handling system, in addition to the superstructure works for the Western Passenger Terminal and the first, second and third aircraft concourses”.

  “The packages also encompass the long-span structural frameworks for buildings covering an area of about 1.5 million square metres (sq m), infrastructure works for the southern airfield area, as well as power generation and district cooling plants supporting the construction programme,” the statement added.

  “The award of facade and roofing packages is also planned during the course of this year,” said Suzanne Al-Anani, CEO of DAEP.

  DAEP has already awarded contracts valued at about AED13bn, with construction works currently under way on several airport packages. These include enabling works, the second runway, and the initial structural foundations for passenger terminals and gates.

  Construction progress

  In May last year, MEED exclusively reported that DAEP had awarded a AED1bn ($272m) deal to UAE firm Binladin Contracting Group to construct the second runway at the airport.

  The enabling works on the terminal are also ongoing and are being undertaken by Abu Dhabi-based Tristar E&C.

  Construction on the project’s first phase is expected to be completed by 2032.

  Construction on substructure works began in November last year, when DAEP formally selected a contractor to deliver the package.

  The government approved the updated designs and timelines for its largest construction project in April 2024.

  In a statement, the authorities said the plan is for all operations from Dubai International airport to be transferred to Al-Maktoum International within 10 years.

  According to an official description on DAEP’s website, the expanded airport’s West Terminal will be a seven-level, 800,000-square-metre facility with an annual capacity of 45 million passengers.

  It will be the second of three terminals at Al-Maktoum International airport, linked to the airside by a 14-station APM system.

  In September 2024, MEED exclusively reported that a team comprising Austria’s Coop Himmelb(l)au and Lebanon’s Dar Al-Handasah had been confirmed as the lead masterplanning and design consultants on the expansion of Al-Maktoum airport.

  The airport’s construction is planned to be undertaken in three phases. The airport will cover an area of 70 square kilometres (sq km) south of Dubai and will have five parallel runways, two terminal buildings, seven concourses and 430 aircraft gates

  It will be five times the size of the existing Dubai International airport and will have the world’s largest passenger-handling capacity of 260 million passengers a year. For cargo, it will have the capacity to handle 12 million tonnes a year.

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  Yasir Iqbal