UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, has announced Sharjah city as the Middle East’s first candidate for the organisation’s ‘Child Friendly City’ Initiative. The Child Friendly City Initiative aims to guide cities in the inclusion of children’s rights as a key component of their goals, policies, programmes and structures. In recent years, Sharjah has put environmental, ecological and societal factors ...

IndiGo, India’s largest budget-carrier, plans to introduce two daily routes to Sharjah International Airport, which will become its sixth international destination. The airline announced the launch of daily non-stop Sharjah-Kozhikode (CCJ) flights from 20 March and daily non-stop Sharjah-Thiruvananthapuram (TRV) flights from 8 April. Headquartered in Gurgaon (Gurugram), India, IndiGo is India’s largest passenger airline with a market share of ...

An independent survey covering the most powerful and dynamic global economies, has named Sharjah as one of the top ten cities in the world for connectivity. Ranked at number six, Sharjah comes ahead of Frankfurt, Manchester, Miami and Dubai, reflecting its superb regional infrastructure and attraction as a business destination for foreign investors. Announcing the findings, Sharjah Investment and Development ...

KBW Investments (KBW) and Sharjah’s Basma Group (Basma) have announced the formation of ARADA, a new property developer to be focused on mid-market residential properties. ARADA is the third company established by the two partners over the past year, following the formation of construction ventures Klampfer Middle East LLC and Arcadia Middle East LLC in April 2016, both headquartered in ...

Global credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has lowered its long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on the Emirate of Sharjah from ‘A/A-1’ to ‘BBB+/A-2’ with a stable outlook. The agency attributed the change largely to an increase in government debt and slower than expected fiscal consolidation. S&P also forecasts faster economic growth in 2017, increasing ...

Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, is to build a new 300,000 tonne waste-to-energy plant in partnership with Bee’ah, Sharjah’s integrated environmental and waste management company. The news follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Masdar and Bee’ah in 2016 to collaborate in the development of new energy projects. Owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, Masdar ...

The results of Sharjah Census 2015 have been published by the Department of Statistics and Community Development in Sharjah (DSCD), revealing that more than 1.4 million people now live in the emirate of Sharjah. According to the census data, 88 percent of residents are foreign expatriates, 79 percent of residents under the age of 30, while 91 percent of the ...

His Excellency Marwan bin Jassim Al Sarkal, CEO of Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq), was awarded with the Golden Friends of India Award in recognition of his pivotal role in promoting economic and investment relationships between Sharjah and India. Mohammad Al Musharrkh, Director of the Sharjah FDI Office (Invest in Sharjah), received the iconic award on behalf of His ...

Sharjah Department of Public Works has announced the commencement of two waste management infrastructure projects at a cost of AED 641 million (US$175m). Sharjah’s government recently confirmed a 7 percent increase in spending on public infrastructure, accounting for some 30 percent of 2017’s record AED 22 billion (US$ 5.9b) budget. The Public Works department has given the go ahead for ...

Sharjah International Airport registered a 10 percent year-on-year increase in passengers, handling 11 million passengers from January to December 2016. The airport passed the 10 million passenger mark for the first time in 2015, showing 5.5 percent growth. Since then, the airport has continued to show strong growth. Airport passengers increased 12 percent during the first quarter of 2016, 11 ...