The United Arab Emirates is a Middle Eastern country situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia on the Persian Gulf, comprising seven emirates: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. Before 1971, they were known as the Trucial States or Trucial Oman, in reference to a nineteenth-century truce between Britain and several Arab Sheikhs. The name Pirate Coast has also been used in reference to the area's emirates in the 18th to early 20th century. It borders Oman and Saudi Arabia. The country is rich in oil and, although it lacks other natural resources, it expects recent additional economic diversification to draw more financial and banking firms.

Oil and gas are the Emirates’ main industries, and underpin the country’s considerable prosperity. Outside the oil and gas sector, which includes refining and the production of oil-derived chemicals, most economic activity is government sponsored, and designed to diversify the economy and reduce dependence on oil. This strategy has been reasonably successful and the oil sector’s contribution to GDP is now down to about 45 per cent. Chemicals, aluminium and steel production are the most important of the new industries. Other newly established industries produce consumer goods for the domestic market. There is some agriculture, mostly livestock rearing, in what is an unfavourable climate; fishing is also significant.
The economy has boomed in recent years. GDP growth for 2005 was estimated to be 28.5 per cent. At the end of 2005, the International Monetary Fund predicted the UAE's economy would become the third largest in East and Central Asia. By 2006, the GDP is expected to reach US$150.9 billion. Most of the country’s economic development has been concentrated in the two richest and most powerful of the seven Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai; the remainder are relatively underdeveloped. UAE is a member of OPEC, and of the Gulf Co-operation Council which is increasingly concerning itself with regional economic collaboration. Plans to establish a customs union among the six member states are well advanced, and the GCC has sought advice from the EU on the creation of a single currency.