Good morning from London.
Money got more expensive in the UAE yesterday. The Central Bank raised its base rate within hours of the Federal Reserve’s first increase in three years, and the dirham’s peg means the decision passes through to mortgages, business loans and savings accounts here rather than staying in Washington. Oil fell for a second day. In Abu Dhabi, the Executive Council approved new plans for fertility treatment, nurseries and community services.
What to look out for
Bank-by-bank mortgage and deposit repricing after Thursday’s base-rate move.
Any Saudi Aramco confirmation that the East-West bypass is carrying crude.
Iran-war signalling after Saudi Arabia’s warning over the drone downed near Makkah.
UAE base rate rises to 3.9%
The Central Bank of the UAE raised the base rate on its overnight deposit facility by 25 basis points, from 3.65% to 3.9%, effective Thursday 17 September. It kept the rate for borrowing short-term liquidity at 50 basis points above the base rate.
The move followed the Federal Reserve, which raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75–4% on Wednesday in a unanimous 12-0 vote. It was the Fed’s first increase since 2023, and its updated projections point to another before the year ends.
Because the dirham is pegged to the dollar, the Central Bank moves in step with the Fed. What that means for households depends on the product. Vijay Valecha of Century Financial says the base rate anchors overnight money-market rates and that Eibor, the benchmark behind most local borrowing, moves closely with it, feeding through to variable-rate mortgages and corporate borrowing. Madhur Kakkar of Elevate Financial Services estimates that a full quarter-point rise adds about Dh210 a month, or roughly Dh2,500 a year, to a Dh1.5 million mortgage with 25 years left.
Savers should see the benefit first. Kakkar expects deposit and term-deposit returns to improve before borrowers feel higher repayments, and companies already carrying higher energy and shipping costs will feel the increase soonest.
Borrowing costs rose because of a decision in Washington. Another regional price driver is a repair plan in Saudi Arabia.
Aramco builds a bypass as Brent falls below $104
Saudi Aramco is working to bypass the damaged section of the East-West pipeline and wants about half its capacity back within days, with full capability in roughly six weeks. The account comes from one person familiar with the work, cited by Bloomberg, rather than from an Aramco announcement.
Brent settled at $103.63 on Thursday, down about 2% on the day and its lowest close this month, according to FT data. The 1,200-kilometre line has been shut since last Friday’s drone attack, and it is the route that allows Saudi crude to reach the Red Sea without passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Traders had no estimate of the outage’s length until Wednesday, and a reported six-week ceiling, even from an unnamed source, was enough to move the price.
Abu Dhabi’s government spent Thursday on its own agenda, starting with an experiment in how it takes decisions.
Abu Dhabi runs a council session with an AI system
Abu Dhabi’s Executive Council used an agentic AI platform for the first time on Thursday, in a meeting chaired by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
The system, called the AI Committee System, analyses proposals before the session and prepares an executive summary of every agenda item. During the meeting, it offers insights and questions, checks information, raises observations, and proposes recommendations based on the data. Afterwards, it produces analytical reports, minutes, and an action summary. Its outputs and the decisions taken remain traceable to the original source papers.
The council is applying a framework Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid set out in April, when he said half of UAE government sectors, services and operations would run on agentic AI within two years.
The system helped the council work through its agenda. Three of the decisions it reached will be felt in Abu Dhabi households.
Abu Dhabi targets an 80% IVF success rate
Sheikh Khaled approved the Abu Dhabi Programme for the Future of Reproductive Health, which aims to raise the emirate’s IVF success rate to 80% by 2030 using precision medicine, genomics, artificial intelligence and research. The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi will oversee it, covering prevention and preconception health, genetic screening, fertility diagnosis and treatment, and assisted reproductive technologies for both men and women.
The announcement does not say whether the 80% counts pregnancies, live births or another clinical outcome.
The council also approved a fourfold expansion of the Al Ghad Nurseries project, from 3,000 places to 12,000 by 2029, extending it from Abu Dhabi and Al Ain into Al Dhafra. The 10 existing nurseries take in 3,253 children, 80% of whom are the children of working mothers, and the expansion is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs for Emirati women in early childhood education.
The first phase of the Abu Dhabi Liveability Strategy completed more than 60 projects worth over Dh12 billion, part of an approved Dh42 billion programme, and lifted the emirate’s District Completion Index from 67% to 84% in two years. The council approved a second five-year phase, which shifts the focus from building community facilities to running them well.
Abu Dhabi was planning for the people who live there. In Dubai, Emirates spent the week selling to visitors.
Emirates leaves ATM with more than 30 agreements
Emirates closed Arabian Travel Market on Thursday, having signed more than 30 agreements across 16 countries, alongside four Middle East honours at the 2026 World Travel Awards.
The tourism deals span Kenya and Mozambique, Finland, Norway, Bologna, Parma, Malaysia, Japan, the Seychelles and Mauritius, with renewals in Sharjah and a new agreement with Ras Al Khaimah. The Finland agreement lands ahead of the Helsinki launch on 1 October. Kuwait Airways and Emirates will expand their interline arrangement into a reciprocal codeshare.
The airline is also chasing segments beyond leisure. A memorandum with the Medical Tourism Association makes Emirates its preferred airline for medical, wellness and longevity travel; agreements with Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority and with ICEF target education travel; and a partnership with Cutting Edge will build packages around cricket, football, motorsport, golf and tennis fixtures. Emirates publicly showed its first electrically powered Premium Economy seat.
Emirates said on 14 September that it was operating at around 93% of its pre-disruption capacity.
Emirates is selling travel to adults. UAE schools are preparing children for restrictions arriving next year.
Schools prepare families for the under-15 social media rule
Schools across the UAE are spending more time on online safety, screen time and responsible digital behaviour ahead of restrictions that will bar children under 15 from creating or using personal social media accounts. The Cabinet announced the rule in June and gave platforms 12 months to comply.
Cabinet Resolution No. 106 of 2026 implements Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2025 on child digital safety. It requires age verification, applies additional protections to 15- and 16-year-olds and prohibits advertising targeted at children through tracking or behavioural profiling.
Both principals said the rule cannot do the work on its own. Lisa Johnson, principal of the American Academy for Girls, says giving children more time to mature before managing accounts independently is a sensible safeguard, but the school’s most important role is education, and habits of thought matter more than telling a child something is prohibited. Brian Cleary, head of secondary at Swiss International Scientific School Dubai, says digital wellbeing cannot be handled in a single lesson and that schools and parents need to work in partnership. Both encourage parents to start the conversation before the rules take effect.
Dubai also announced screens of a different kind.
Dubai revives its film festival for December 2027
The Dubai International Film Festival will return on 8 December 2027, ten years after its last edition. Mona Ghanem Al Marri, vice chairperson and managing director of the Dubai Media Council, announced the revival at the Arab Media Summit on Thursday.
She said the festival was not returning to recreate the past, and that the new edition would focus on Arab cinema and on connecting directors, producers, actors and writers with investors. Hesham Sultan Al Olama, chief executive of the Dubai Films and Games Commission, said details would follow in due course.
The original festival ran from 2004 until it was shut down in 2018, eight months before its planned edition. In that time, it held nearly 2,000 screenings, helped more than 300 regional films reach completion and supported more than 200 Arab filmmakers through its Muhr awards. One of them, Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda, took post-production money from the festival’s Enjaaz fund and went on to win at Venice.
Before the weekend
Three things stay open over the weekend: whether Saudi Arabia’s bypass moves any crude, which UAE bank moves first on deposit rates, and how far Riyadh takes its warning over the drone downed near Makkah. Of those, the rate rise is the one you will feel personally, usually a month or two later.
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A quarter of a percentage point sounds like nothing until it turns up in a repayment. Check your statement, then enjoy your Friday.