The Hindu : Business : Dubai Shopping Festival from January 4

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Friday, Dec 09, 2005

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Dubai Shopping Festival from January 4

Staff Correspondent

`This year, gold and jewellery sales are expected to go up by around 25 per cent'

MUMBAI: Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), which had an extremely successful run in its tenth year in 2005, has thrown its doors open to Indians for the next edition. The month-long festival will commence on January 4, 2006.

DSF 2005 received more than 3.3 million visitors and DSF 2006 is expecting even more visitors. Ibrahim Saleh, COO, DSF said, "this year, we expect gold and jewellery sales to go up by around 25 per cent. Last year, 6 billion Dirhams was spent at the DSF and this year, we are expecting more.''

Tawhid Abdullah, Chairman, Dubai Gold & Jewellery Group, said, "around 95 per cent of the visitors to the DSF buy gold and jewellery. After the six GCC countries, Indians constitute the largest number of visitors ranging from 8-13 per cent of the total visitors.'' Mr. Abdullah said, record gold prices were not a deterrent because "they have been going up steadily for a while and people are aware of it.''

Mr. Saleh said that at this DSF, visitors had a chance to take home winnings worth 100 million Dirhams (Rs. 125 crore). "Winnings in millions are there for the taking for the intrepid shopper. Raffles and promotions, festival sales, there are winnings scored into each one of them. The prizes running into 13 million Dirhams (Rs. 16.2 crore) for gold, over 22.4 million Dirhams (Rs. 27 crore) for Lexus, 3 million Dirhams for Nissan cars are going to be unique this year."

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