The UAE offers the seventh best financing environment in the world for growing businesses, trailing only Singapore, Canada, Chile, Slovenia, Poland and Finland.

The Grant Thornton Global Dynamism Index (GDI) 2013 takes into account many different factors in determining the strength of a country’s financing environment: the quality of the overall financial regulatory system; access of firms to medium-term capital; growth in value of inward M&A deals; the value of inward M&A deals; private sector credit as % of GDP; inward direct investment growth; and corporate tax burden.

The UAE has risen 10 places for the dynamism of its financing environment from 2012. This is largely driven by improved access to finance, where the economy climbed from 26= to 4=, level with Hong Kong, Singapore and Sweden. The UAE also ranks 1= for both the corporate tax burden and private sector indebtedness, and climbed 28 places to 11= for growth in value of M&A deals from 2012.                         

Hisham Farouk, Managing Partner of Grant Thornton UAE, said: “An entrepreneur needs finance to turn their idea into a business. And the business leader needs finance to achieve scalability. The global financial crisis provided clear evidence of the links between the financing environment and business growth.

"As the global economy slowly recovers, it is therefore pleasing to see the UAE improve its business growth environment in this important area. The lowest corporate tax burden and levels of private sector indebtedness in the world is quite an attraction to growing businesses. When combined with increasing access to finance, you can see why M&A activity in the UAE is up."

Overall, the UAE ranked 35= in the 60 economy study, just below the UK. It scored well in economics & growth (20) but was let down by the dynamism of labour & human capital (58), ranking behind Turkey, Egypt and South Africa.