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The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report issued on January 13, 2026 projected the UAE to record 5 percent growth that year before accelerating to 5.1 percent in 2027. Global growth is anticipated to hold steady at 2.6 percent in 2026 and then advance to 2.7 percent in 2027, according to the multilateral institution’s assessment that attributed much of the upward revision to stronger performance in the United States. The World Bank noted that despite resilience to policy uncertainty and trade tensions the current decade is on track to deliver the lowest global growth rates since the 1960s. “With each passing year, the global economy has become less capable of generating growth and seemingly more resilient to policy uncertainty,” Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group, said in the report.
Growth for the Gulf Cooperation Council bloc as a whole is seen reaching 4.4 percent in 2026 and 4.6 percent in 2027 by the World Bank, figures that exceed the projected 3.6 percent and 3.9 percent for the wider Middle East and North Africa region over those years. The UAE’s anticipated performance outpaces the GCC average, reflecting continued diversification, according to the World Bank assessment. Reuters reported in May 2026 that the UAE posted 6.2 percent real GDP growth for full-year 2025 with the non-oil economy expanding 6.8 percent, according to data from the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre.
The World Bank report indicated that by the end of 2025 per capita income in almost all advanced economies had surpassed 2019 levels while roughly one in four developing economies had not. Per capita income growth in developing economies is projected at 3 percent in 2026, about one percentage point below the average recorded between 2000 and 2019, World Bank figures show. Low-income countries are expected to average 5.6 percent growth during 2026 and 2027 yet this will prove insufficient to close the gap with advanced economies where per capita income in developing nations is seen reaching only 12 percent of those levels.
Developing economies overall are forecast to see growth ease to 4 percent in 2026 from 4.2 percent the prior year before a modest recovery to 4.1 percent in 2027, according to the World Bank. The institution warned that 1.2 billion young people are set to join the workforce in these economies over the coming decade, heightening the urgency for productivity-enhancing measures. Policy efforts should focus on building physical, digital and human capital, improving the business climate through greater regulatory certainty and attracting larger volumes of private capital, a dedicated chapter in the report concluded.
Public debt levels in emerging and developing economies have climbed to the highest point in more than half a century, the World Bank stated in its January 2026 document. “With public debt in emerging and developing economies at its highest level in more than half a century, restoring fiscal credibility has become an urgent priority,” M. Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist and director of the World Bank’s Prospects Group, said. The report advocated well-designed fiscal rules to help stabilize debt and rebuild policy buffers although it stressed that credibility, enforcement and political commitment remain essential to their effectiveness.
International Monetary Fund projections place UAE growth at 3.1 percent for 2026, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database. Data published by the UAE Ministry of Economy showed non-oil GDP expanding 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025, driven by contributions from trade, finance, manufacturing and construction, the ministry reported. Such trends align with the diversification that has lifted the non-oil share above 75 percent of GDP, according to official economic reviews.
