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Modern Dubai
Oil reserves in Dubai are less than one-twentieth that of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, and oil income is now only a small proportion of the city's income. Dubai and its twin across the Dubai creek, Deira (independent at that time), became important ports of call for Western manufacturers. Most of the new city's banking and financial centers were headquartered in this area. Dubai maintained its importance as a trade route through the 1970s and 1980s. The city of Dubai has a free trade in gold and till the 90s was the hub of a "brisk smuggling trade" of gold ingots to India, where gold import was restricted (read the novel Dubai by Robin Moore).
Today, Dubai is an important tourist destination and port (Jebel Ali, constructed in the 1970s, has the largest man-made harbour in the world), but also increasingly developing as a hub for service industries such as IT and finance, with the new Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Transport links are bolstered by its rapidly-expanding Emirates Airline, founded by the government in 1985 and still state-owned; based at Dubai International Airport, it carries over 12m passengers a year.
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