IT’S a weekend morning at the Dubai Mall, a glitzy complex with 1,200 stores, and the shoppers are pouring in. A traffic jam has formed in the basement parking area. With passenger arrivals at Dubai’s airport at record highs, retailers expect a good month.

    The 55 percent plunge of oil prices since last June might be expected to usher in an age of austerity in the Gulf, which faces a steep drop in its income.

    But austerity isn’t happening. The economic defences which the Gulf states built up after the global financial crisis five years ago, to cope with just such a drop in oil, are holding.

    Consumers are still spending, companies are investing, and governments are announcing record budgets for 2015. Some economists expect growth in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to accelerate this year.

    A number of building projects are likely to be slowed or suspended, especially in Bahrain and Oman, the smallest and financially weakest economies in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). If oil stays at current levels for several years, the big GCC economies may be forced into painful spending cuts.

    But for the foreseeable future, it’s largely business as usual in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, which have accumulated such large fiscal reserves that they can comfortably keep state spending at high levels.

    This is sustaining consumer and corporate sentiment as oil slides. Jarir, a top Saudi retailer, reported a 20 percent year-on-year jump in fourth-quarter sales. December purchasing manager surveys in Saudi Arabia and the UAE showed non-oil business growing at roughly the same pace as in June.

    Iyad Malas, chief executive of Majid Al Futtaim-Holding, one of the Gulf’s top shopping mall and leisure operators with over 27,000 employees, said the region’s business community was uncertain about oil prices but expected solid growth this year.(SD-Agencies)