Are U.A.E. Car Dealers Waging War on Banks?

Car dealers in the United Arab Emirates are trying to get around strict new regulations created by the Gulf nation's Central Bank that require car buyers to put 20 percent down on every auto purchase.

According to an analysis by Precious de Leon on the KippReport.com news Web site, financiers in the U.A.E. have said that although the Central Bank's intentions are in the right place when it came to implementing the new lending regulations, it isn't doing as much good now as it would have done three years ago before the country faced a debt crisis.

It seems like there's a growing number of car buyers who are either opting to avail of a personal loan or maxing out their credit cards to pay for the newly-implemented 20 percent down payment to purchase a vehicle. Add this down payment/credit to that the car loan to actually buy the car and you've got an extremely lethal financial combination, says de Leon in her KippReport column.

One of Dubai's largest auto dealers, Al Futtaim Motors, has said that it has come up with an innovative payment schemes that enables customers to buy the car without the newly mandatory 20 percent down payment, allowing them instead to pay in 24-month installments. Al Futtaim Motors said it sees this scheme as a way to prevent buyers from incurring further debt.

In our humble opinion, while we agree that the companies need to follow the Central Bank's guidelines, we wonder what the Central Bank will do to banks that continue to irresponsibly give out personal loans. We also wonder if there will be any action towards getting people to understand that two wrongs (in this case getting multiple loans for a set of wheels) can't possibly be right, says de Leon.