ABU DHABI: The United Arab Emirates' credit bureau has begun covering retail customers and plans to extend its work to companies next year, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
The much-delayed Al Etihad Credit Bureau now has financial information on 2.8 million individuals or 97 percent of the total population with a credit history, Marwan Lutfi said.
The UAE government is seeking to strengthen the banking system against bad debt. Until now, banks have often been unable to access data on consumers at other financial institutions when making lending decisions, meaning borrowers could take on huge debts with multiple lenders without any of them knowing.
Together with tougher mortgage lending rules and caps on lending to government-linked companies, the credit bureau is one of several tools aimed at guarding against a repeat of the crisis that paralyzed the financial system in 2009 and 2010. "The credit reports will play a key role in helping banks and financial institutions to assess risk accurately, enabling them to make informed lending decisions and lower lending risks," Lutfi told reporters at the Abu Dhabi headquarters.
The bureau had previously set the end of the first quarter of 2014 as the deadline for starting operations but the plan was delayed due to inaccurate information or errors in the consumer credit data being submitted by banks.
About 99 percent of the required correct data on consumers had now been supplied by banks, Lutfi said. To date, 43 banks and financial institutions had submitted their customers' credit data and 29 of them had subscribed to the bureau's credit reporting services. In total, 51 banks operate in the UAE.
Starting next year, the bureau will also offer credit reports on all companies operating in the UAE, including any details of bounced checks.
Some banks are unsure about how much difference it will make to their lending practices.
"If we would have been getting it this wrong for this long then we would have been suffering much larger credit losses than we have," said the chief executive of one lender.
UAE credit bureau starts retail operations
UAE credit bureau starts retail operations
Oman inflation at 1.6%, latest figures show
RIYADH: Oman’s consumer price index rose by 1.6 percent in December compared with the same month a year earlier, reflecting moderate inflationary pressures at year’s end.
Average inflation for the January–December 2025 period increased by 1 percent, according to official data.
Figures released by the National Center for Statistics and Information showed that miscellaneous personal goods and services recorded the sharpest price increase, rising by 10 percent year on year.
This was followed by transport at 2.8 percent, restaurants and hotels at 2.6 percent, and furniture, household equipment and routine maintenance at 2.4 percent, as well as education at 2.2 percent.
Food and non-alcoholic beverages prices increased by 1.1 percent, while clothing and footwear rose by 0.2 percent and health by 0.1 percent. In contrast, prices in the culture and recreation group declined by 0.1 percent.
Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, as well as tobacco and communications, remained unchanged over the period.
Within the food and non-alcoholic beverages category, December prices compared with the same month of 2024 showed notable increases in fish and seafood at 6 percent and fruits at 4 percent.
Sugar, jam, honey and confectionery rose by 3.5 percent, milk, cheese and eggs by 2.1 percent, and non-alcoholic beverages by 0.9 percent.
Meat prices increased by 0.8 percent, bread and cereals, oils and fats by 0.7 percent, and other unclassified food products by 0.4 percent, while vegetable prices fell by 5.8 percent.
Regionally, Al Dhahirah governorate recorded the highest inflation rate at 2.5 percent by the end of December compared with a year earlier.
Inflation also rose by 2.1 percent in Al Dakhiliyah, 1.7 percent in Muscat and Al Buraimi, and 1.5 percent in South Al Batinah.
South Al Sharqiyah and Musandam each posted increases of 1.1 percent, while North Al Sharqiyah and North Al Batinah rose by 0.9 percent. Al Wusta and Dhofar recorded inflation of 0.8 percent.
The report highlights the relative importance of expenditure groups within the consumer price index basket, underscoring why movements in certain categories have a greater impact on overall inflation.
Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels carry the largest weight at 31.7, followed by food and non-alcoholic beverages at 20.6 and transport at 14.5.
Together, these three groups account for more than two-thirds of the CPI basket, meaning price stability in housing and utilities can significantly moderate headline inflation even when sharper increases are recorded in smaller-weight categories such as miscellaneous goods and services.
The analysis also notes that around 56,640 individual price quotations were collected from 3,907 sources across the Sultanate during the reference period.
In addition, rental data were gathered from a dedicated sample of 1,509 rented housing units, providing a detailed and representative measure of housing costs, which remain the most heavily weighted component of the inflation basket.
