By Martin Dokoupil

ABU DHABI, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi's economy is recovering from impacts of the global economic crisis with business and consumer confidence rising, a set of new indicators for the Gulf Arab oil-exporting emirate showed on Sunday.
The worst global recession since the 1930s slashed income for Gulf Arab oil producers, depressing the region's key economies, like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
But Abu Dhabi, the key oil producer among seven emirates that form the UAE federation, said signs of revival are emerging. Abu Dhabi contributes around two thirds to the UAE's total gross domestic product.

"It (new indicators) reflects positive performance of the economy," said Mohammed Omar Abdulla, undersecretary at the emirate's Department of Economic Development.
"And also the positive reaction of people being it consumers or the business community. So both sides are very positive and very optimistic and this provides a very good base for our future plan," he told reporters.
Abu Dhabi's new business climate indicator of future expectations climbed higher into the positive territory, reaching 68.01 in the third quarter of this year, up from 56.96 in the second quarter.
Another quarterly index, showing how corporates assess current conditions, cleared the no-change 50.0 level, scoring 53.55 compared with a bearish reading of 49.49 in April-June.
Average consumer confidence in the emirate rose to 138 in July to September from 125 in the previous three months, the inaugural release showed. It will be released on a monthly basis.
Abdulla declined to comment on forecasts for the emirate's GDP growth, saying the outlook for 2010 would be released next month. He also said the statistics centre was preparing to launch monthly releases of inflation data as of next year.
Analysts have said it was hard to assess the extent of economic recovery in the Gulf due to a lack of monthly real economy data in the world's top oil-producing region and the UAE in particular.
Last week, UAE Economy Minister Sultan bin Saeed al-Mansouri said the Arab world's second-largest economy would grow 1.3 percent in 2009 with anti-crisis measures boosting confidence.
The UAE growth forecast would mark a significant slowdown from 7.4 percent rise in 2008 but is still welcome news given the warning last month from the country's central bank that the economy could contract this year.

Officials said the business climate indicators measure development of mainly production volume, added value volume, sales, operation capacity, exports, inventories, prices and investment, but gave no further details.
The consumer confidence index includes spending and saving expectations during the last three months, the current period and next three months.
Abu Dhabi has also started tracking financial sector indicators such as inflation rate and non-oil exports on a quarterly basis and labour market demand on an annual basis.
(Reporting by Martin Dokoupil, editing by Natsuko Waki) Keywords: ABUDHABI ECONOMY/

(Dubai newsroom, +971 4 366 4221, martin.dokoupil@thomsonreuters.com)

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