A budget of Dh600 million ($163 million) has been allocated for the World Bank-International Monetary Fund (IMF) convention in Dubai in September 2003, said officials associated with the project.
“Dh350 million ($95 million) of the sum will go towards the construction of the 6,000-seat convention center,” they said, cited by the Gulf News on Thursday.
"The World Bank-IMF conference will create a lot of jobs for our young nationals. Their experience in handling jobs during the event will help us to handle similar conferences in the future," said Ibrahim Belselah, general coordinator for Dubai 2003.
He said preparations were running on schedule, with a new convention centre and an extra hall at the Dubai World Trade Centre and new hotels coming up in time for the opening. The summit will be held from September 23 to 24, 2003.
"This is the largest international convention to be held in the Middle East. In every summit, between 12 to 15 heads of state, finance ministers and central bank governors of most member states usually participate.
"The number of heads of state and finance ministers attending the Dubai summit will be higher than usual. All 183 member countries will join. We are expecting 16,000 to 20,000 delegates," Belselah said.
Dubai's infrastructure is in place to host such a high-profile summit.
"We have almost everything in place. What we need is good coordination between various departments. The new convention center will take care of the venue. We have sufficient hotels to accommodate guests. Local transport for officials can be taken care of by existing supplies. We might import new vehicles and limousines for the summit, if need be," Belselah said.
Dubai now has 282 hotels with about 23,000 rooms and over 100 hotel apartments, enough to take care of the convention's needs.
However, the paper said that about 16 new hotels, most of them in the luxury category, were coming up well before the summit – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
