Gerardo,

If your willing to move to KSA send your CV to rrcatalan@hotmail.com, maybe I can help you.


Cheers,

Chris,

I don’t know whether this will be any use to you but you might get something from Bixee.com

If you haven’t done it already, make sure you’ve got your details lodged with the recruiters on the Planning Planet Job Page

Chris Oggham

Below is an article from one of the magazines in western world. Must read for all guys in this gulf region as no new projects propping up in the area with major companies laying off people left-&-right.



Dubai is soon headed for a crisis of such huge proportions that its expatriate population has never seen ever.

A double whammy of weak crude prices - down from $150 to $50 a barrel - and weaker US currency- petrodollars - will make its ruling Executive council scour high and low for ideas on how to fund the highly leveraged property market balloon it has created and what to make of asset depreciation.

For expatriates, especially those who made laughable investments believing that Las Vegas could be created around the fringes of conservative culture, this could be the wake-up call for a long dreary nuclear winter.

The role of Dubai has never been understood; why is Dubai so powerful within the Emirates - even though it does not have oil, no manufacturing base, nor has it been able to achieve Singapore’s status as a port of repute. Yet, it has been able to hold up to Abu Dhabi, which owns 90 percent of the UAE’s oil, and whose rulers, although more powerful, are far more low profile.

One reason that comes to mind is that Dubai is a refiner for Iran’s oil, and a lot of refining margins are tied to the price of oil, which means the last four years were a bonanza for Dubai. This perhaps explains its clout. With clout, comes ambition, and with ambition a penchant for breaking rules, and Dubai has had all of it. In fact its direction toward becoming a tourism hub for Middle East revelers has always been watched closely by the Islamic right.

Dubai has no choice, because tourism in desert cannot takeoff without prostitution, alcohol or gambling. There is always talking about how activities in Dubai are frowned upon by the conservative countries. Some time in 2005 there was a rumor of some threats by extremists to bomb City Center, a shopping mall in Dubai, all of which was well-handled and overcome without alarm. Clearly, it had become evident even then that Dubai’s success was getting increasingly uncomfortable for some, and sooner or later there was bound to be trouble.

With bright ideas and some really grandiose schemes indeed being delivered, it was western & asian money, and speculation drove up the market in Dubai. There was a time in 2007, when financial executives from New York, speculated on villas in Jumeirah, booking a villa one week, and selling it out the next for a profit. It was this false sense of a bullish market that encouraged lesser mortals among the expatriates to participate in the orgy. Until of course, it all blew up last week in their faces.

Finally, as the sand settles, people will begin to see Dubai what it really is - a city of imagination but very little last ability: without natural resources, like water and fertile soil l, and no oil, it looks like this time the devil has come to stay.

Without the sins of the West - alcohol, prostitution, gambling - Dubai would have certainly found it a challenge to sustain its tourism story.

THE BURJ DUBAI TOWER

Speculators in Dubai’s Burj Tower - the tallest tower in the world - are in for a rude shock. They have woken up to find that their property values have plummeted up to 50 percent, that too in just 3 weeks. According to brokers, most properties in the Burj Tower district have slumped by at least 22 percent. These were same apartments and commercial establishments that had risen 88-200 percent in the year until September 2008.

Zero premium and even discount sales have become rampant as investors rush out of sand castles and in to cash. Prices outside the tower fell from an average of AED 3,500 ($952) per square foot to AED 2,700, and on 8 Boulevard Walk, for instance, dropped from AED 3,300 per sq ft to AED 2,500 per sq ft in three weeks – a 24 percent decrease.

Price fluctuations in the Burj Dubai tower had been far more volatile because of the high percentage of speculators owning these properties, according to brokers. Some had since been sold at significant losses to generate cash. However, they said, the most expensive floors, such as those branded by Armani, sold at about AED 14,000 per sq ft and were holding much of their value.

aBU dHABI IS ok, But Dubai is worse.

All the guys in Dubai who have been sacked by companies r in search of jobs still after two months and i believe is WORSt in the world as of now.

It may take at least 2-3 months for market to be stable and major projects to commence.

Till that time, no new jobs for planning engineers.

Pray to GOD :-)