The continuing expansion of UAE?s economy should underpin the steady growth of the insurancesector. However, it is not clear what will cause non-life penetration to increase over the forecastperiod. Life insurance will likely remain very underdeveloped, partly because local households do not need it.There will remain, however, a substantial opportunity to sell life insurance and other organisedsavings products to expatriates. The UAE will remain one of the most important markets for takaful. Most local companies lack scale in a fragmented and not necessarily profitable industry.The regulatory environment is still being developed by the Insurance Authority.The UAE?s insurance sector can be described as being reasonably large in absolute terms, fairly rapidlygrowing, open to foreign companies, fragmented and highly competitive ? with the result that a lot ofplayers are not making an adequate return on their capital. Growth in the past has been driven by the risein health insurance, which became compulsory for private sector workers in 2008 and by the rise oftakaful (shari?a-compliant insurance), which accounts for about one fifth of total premiums.Relative to its peers in the region, the UAE?s insurance sector is also unusual in that there are twoseparate regulatory regimes. Offshore business is undertaken by companies that are established in theDubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) and regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority(DFSA). Onshore business is regulated by the Insurance Authority. Although the two regulators signed amemorandum of understanding (MoU) at the end of April 2011, an organisation that is regulated by theDFSA does not automatically have the right to undertake onshore business in the rest of the UAE.The latest figures from the country?s 25 or so listed insurance companies indicate that many of the smaller? and not so small ? players have been adjusting, quite successfully, to ch

BMI View: Libyan exports are set to rise to 350,000b/d in November. Nevertheless, volumes finding their way onto  international markets remain low as crude is channelled to domestic refineries in order to prevent a serious domestic shortage of processed fuels.Libyan oil exports are set to hit 350,000 barrels a day (b/d) in November 2011, according to National Oil Corporation (NOC) officials. This is more than double the level of October exports. NOC plans to export 14 cargoes of 600,000 barrels (bbl) each, with crudes drawn from Total?s offshore Al Jurf field and Eni?s onshore Abu Atiffel, Amna, Sirtica, and Zueitina fields. NOC subsidiary Agoco also plans to offer two cargoes to the international market, each comprising 1mn bbl.Exports of 350,000b/d are still a long way from pre-war levels, which saw 1.3mn b/d of light sweet Libyan crude flow onto the international market. As a result, demand from European refiners for alternative sources of light sweet crude is set to remain strong. This is likely to provide continued support to Brent prices, which have held a significant premium against other benchmarks since the supply of Libyan crude were to the international market was cut by by the civil war.

BMI?s food and drink team are rolling out a series of new and improved risk/reward ratings for all its regions. The new ratings, introduced here for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, are more growth orientated with a greater emphasis placed on which markets are going to provide the greatest opportunities, rather than which are the most developed in terms of per capita spending today.This approach is particularly important today given how well so many emerging markets are still doing and how much room forgrowth there is in the long term. Food and drink companies are increasingly looking outside the traditional blocks of emergingeconomies and putting more money into frontier markets, so pitting these markets against one another is a very useful exercise.At a basic level, food and drink companies are particularly interested in economies that are growing quickly (well reflected bythe per capita food consumption growth indicator), have large and young populations (which are why we have introduced the youth population indicator) and can provide a reasonably sound business environment. With regard to risk, which accounts for 40% of the overall score, we have made two key changes. We have introduced mass grocery retail (MGR) penetration and income distribution.MGR penetration is our main way of accessing how relatively developed the overall consumer sector is.The full risk/reward breakdown and new ratings structure is illustrated using the example of Saudi Arabia in the first table. The use of South Arabia, which is covered as a standalone quarterly report, allows us to benchmark the likes of Egypt and Qatar, which are economies that are going to provide hugely differing opportunitiesfor consumer focused companies.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region comprises a mix of well-established highly developed economies supported by stable political and cultural regimes, equally well-developed economies that nevertheless may be prone to civil and political unrest and emerging markets that are undergoing far-reaching changes at many levels. Consequently, the region hosts telecommunications markets that are at varying stages of technological development and maturity and, therefore the growth potential for value-added services (VAS) will vary according to the prevailing economic, social and cultural conditions. Nevertheless, there are clear signs that VAS are becoming increasingly important to consumers and businesses in all markets. BMI considers that the Middle East markets, in particular, have the potential to grow fastest and in diverse directions.Due to low service prices engendered by competition and the ability of even the most basic handsets to deliver text-based messaging services (SMS), users have become accustomed to accessing information, life tools and entertainment-based VAS. The relatively low cost of voice services mean, on the whole, voice service revenues and traffic will continue to outweigh the contribution of VAS for some time to come, but recent developments show that some markets are already ahead ofthe curve and will bear watching as they influence their neighbours.A recent study by Cisco Systems suggests the Middle East and Africa region?s monthly mobile data traffic volume will grow at a rate of 129% a year between 2010 and 2015, the fastest for any region of the world, although it only beats forecasts for the Asia region if Japan is treated separately. The Middle East region benefits from the fact that there are several players active in multiple markets. This has enabled them to introduce a standard suite of service portfolios over hardware- and software-based infrastructure sourced from a small group of suppliers, contributing to ubiquity a

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