Since the opening of Port Rashid in late 1970. Dubai Ports have grown to serve over 100 main shipping lines with a network of feeder services connecting it to all major ports in the Middle East, East Africa and the Asian sub-continent.

As a Middle Eastern trading entreport Dubai has no equal. Shipping developed so rapidly during the seventies that Mina Rashid was enlarged twice and work was begun on a new port at Jebel Ali designed as the largest man-made harbour in the world, 35 kilometres south of Dubai city, which opened in 1979. After the management of the two ports was merged to create Dubai Ports Authority, this registered a growth of (37) per cent in containers handled to reach more than one million containers, lifted Dubai ports to take the 15^thplace of the most busiest ports in the world and enjoys its strategic location in the Middle East as a main point of re-export.

As a further incentive to liberalise trade, a 100 square kilometre Free Zone was created around the port of Jebel Ali allowing (100) per cent foreign ownership. By September 1993. Jebel Ali Free Zone had grown to become home for nearly (550) intentional organisations from (58) countries.