The gateway to the Gulf is more than one port and certainly more than one road. That is the message from Abdulla bin Touq, Minister of Economy and Tourism.
“[The Strait of] Hormuz really matters and it will keep on mattering,” he said in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Rise Summit in Dubai. “It's really important to really focus on Hormuz as well, to have it as a gate.”
It is a direct rebuttal to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's remarks last month, who said the strait would be “a worthless piece of water” within two years.
Before the Iran war, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited the Strait of Hormuz. However, traffic flows through the waterway have dropped sharply since the war began on February 28.
But while the strait matters, it is not the only way in, Mr bin Touq said. “The UAE doesn't have only one road. It has many roads to come to it,” he said.
The UAE has revealed plans to reduce its reliance on the strait as part of its “Zero Hormuz” strategy to diversify trade routes and supply chains.
It has established regional logistics corridors linking the Arabian Gulf to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman. Development of east-coast ports at Khor Fakkan and Fujairah, outside the strait, has been accelerated. The UAE is also building a new pipeline to provide additional capacity for exporting Abu Dhabi oil via the Gulf of Oman.
If Hormuz is the front gate, the east coast is the side door and business is already walking through it, Mr bin Touq said.
Asked where the next boom would be, he pointed to company registrations on the east coast. “Redundancy means dollar signs. It means investments,” he said. Resilience does not mean retreat, though. The UAE is not making the economy safer by “closing and shrinking it”, he added.
However, Mr bin Touq resisted the idea of a dramatic pivot from west to east. He said the UAE continues to function as one connected economy.
With Etihad Rail now linking Abu Dhabi to Fujairah in under four hours, “we can have breakfast in Khor Fakkan, lunch in Sharjah or Dubai and dinner in Abu Dhabi”, he said. The rail line binds “these seven economies that [are] very knitted together”.
Tourism rebound anticipated
In terms of crises like the Iran war, tourism is the first sector to be hit and the last to recover “anywhere in the world”, with its return heavily dependant on airline capacity.
The UAE is working with other countries to secure removal from their travel advisory lists, as tourism figures show signs of recovery after months of disruption because of the conflict.
With Lufthansa and Air France committed to resuming UAE flights by the end of this month, “this shows you there is confidence”, Mr bin Touq said. That makes November and December a critical final window for tourism this year.
The early signs are encouraging. Hotel occupancy reached about 68 per cent at the end of August. September's figures have not yet been published but the minister described the trend as “really, really nice”.
Economic football
The International Monetary Fund expects the UAE economy to shrink 3.9 per cent this year before rebounding 7.7 per cent in 2027. “It is 3.9 per cent, and there is decimal points, so it's not 4 per cent,” Mr bin Touq noted.
The UAE's real gross domestic product also grew 0.4 per cent annually to Dh961.9 billion ($262 billion) in the first half of 2026, driven by non-oil business activity, despite the impact of the Iran war.
The minister discussed his plan for the economy as a football formation. “In front, I have attackers: my tourism. My midfielder is the businesses … and my defence is when it comes to IP and innovation capacity,” he said. “What happened is I lost my attacker and my midfielders are scoring goals.”
For 2027, tourism must lead from the front again. Meanwhile, the midfield needs reform and access to capital.
On reform, he meant legislation and “the things that we tolerated through the crisis”. On capital, he pointed to the Dh1 billion Emirates Growth Fund, where he sits on the board. The fund aims to take companies with revenue of Dh1 million to Dh10 million up to Dh50 million to Dh60 million. “We're already investing,” he said. The government also wants more venture capital in the region and artificial intelligence “embedded within the systems of these companies, of these factories”.
As for the interviewer's place in his squad, the minister offered a trial. “Play a winger,” he said.