DUBAI: Nakheel, the real estate giant at the heart of Dubai’s financial crisis, said yesterday it will pay off all its bank debt of Dh7.9bn ($2.15bn) ahead of schedule.
“Our payment is covering up to the last instalment (scheduled for) 2018,” Nakheel Chairman Ali Rashid Lootah told reporters.
The full amount would be paid in August despite an earlier pledge to only settle $1.65bn this summer. The government-related entity, which built Dubai’s palm-shaped island and a cluster of isles in the form of a world map, is to meet its obligations from its own revenues. “All this cash is generated from Nakheel’s own income, not from the support fund of the government,” said Lootah.
The bulk of the company’s debt — Dh6.8bn — was due in September 2015, in addition to 200 million dirhams due in March 2016 and Dh900m two years later.
Nakheel had piled up a large mountain of debt during five years of rapid growth in Dubai’s property sector, before the global financial crisis hit the Gulf emirate in 2009.
The company was part of government-linked Dubai World group, which sent jitters in global markets when it signalled in autumn 2009 that it was facing difficulties paying off debts that totalled around $24.9bn. AFP
