Abstract—Middle East possesses a strong spending power that few other economies can contest, presenting a greater medium to long-term opportunities than most other parts of the world, albeit the downturn in Dubai. The aim of this paper is to investigate how Malaysian contractors manage financial and economic risks when operating in the Gulf construction industry. The data collection method was face-to-face in-depth interviews with three experts from Malaysia whom had experiences in Gulf construction industry. This paper identified the financial and economic risks encountered by the Malaysian contractors and their risk response measures. From the findings, it was obvious that the Gulf economies encouraged ventures from foreign firms but the risks faced by those firms were mostly on the internal financial aspects. The findings were purely an indication on the risk management practice in the Gulf based on three in-depth interviews with Malaysian experts in the Gulf construction. This preliminary study did not involve construction projects from all countries in the Gulf region; it covered only Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, but left out Oman and Kuwait due to the absence of their projects awarded to Malaysian contractors.
Index Terms—Economic risk, financial risk, international and overseas construction, risk management.
The authors are with the Quantity Surveying Department, Faculty of Built Environment, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (e-mail: siawchuing@ um.edu.my; arhamzah@um.edu.my).
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Cite: Siaw Chuing Loo and Hamzah Abdul-Rahman, "Malaysian Contractors in Gulf Construction: A Preliminary Study on Financial and Economic Risks," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 437-441, 2012.
Copyright 2008-2010. International Journal of Engineering and Technology (IJET)
