Be careful what you wish for. For the last few months, anyone who’s read my blog will know that I’ve been hankering to hear a sensible, hype-free, impartial view on the economic crisis in the GCC, based on facts and evidence. This week, I believe I read one, and it’s bad news.

Unlike many economists who have been predicting a recovery from the global economic downturn in 2010, a lecturer from Princeton University on Gulf economies said that a time lag between state stimulus packages ending and real demand picking up will cause further problems in 2010.

He pointed out that while there is some stabilisation, the problem is this is mainly attributable to government spending and stimulus. And what happens when the stimulus peters out? With the job market is still in tatters, the spending cannot come from private households. Even if the global economy does recover quickly and the population of Dubai increases, he said that it will not signal the start of an upturn for Dubai’s property prices.

His opinion seemed to clash with a HSBC economist who trumpeted that the worst is now over, several top GCC executives who sang out in chorus that the region is out of recession and an employee at Mashreq bank who believes the economy is turning around because there is more traffic on the roads. Mashreq chose to ignore that their ‘skips’ have risen to unprecedented levels, and perhaps the increased traffic was attributable to their customers speeding to the airport to abandon their cars.

Going by Mashreq’s methodology, the signs I see are quite different. My mother, who visited recently, commented on how much quieter the emirate is compared to when she was last here. The crowds in the bars we went to had definitely thinned, and shoppers in the malls were sparse. As I walk to the end of Discovery Gardens in the evenings to stretch my legs, the further I walk the less lights are on, until there is complete blackout.

However, I have noticed other things changing too; I can hear tinkering on the previously deserted construction sites, I can’t deny the traffic is trying my patience once again and it is getting harder to flag a taxi.

From this, I could come to the conclusion that the economy is showing signs of improvement but there is still much work to be done, but I would prefer to look at facts and figures rather than ambiguous signs that could just as easily indicate that the emirate is merely coming out of hibernation after Ramadan. Otherwise I may as well try and predict the future of the economy reading tealeaves...