The Free Trade Zone as well as the Non-Free Trade Zone companies in Dubai and other Emirates of UAE must have the respective trade license for its business activities.
The only exception are the UAE offshore companies – these companies are not required to have such trade license.
What is the whole concept of licensing of the FTZ and LLC companies?
In Dubai, UAE, by the provisions of law, there are no companies which can do all types of business – each company can do only some specific business, for example, trading or production or consulting or any other type of activity and shall obtain the licence for such specific business.
Can the company in Dubai or other Emirates have more than 1 license.
Yes, companies can have more than 1 license, subject to fulfilment of the respective requirements.
Who issues the licenses for FTZ and LLC companies ?
For the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) companies the licenses are issued by the respective Free Trade Zone authority.
For non - FTZ companies licenses are issued by respective economic department, for example, for the Dubai companies – by the Dubai Economic Department.
Are there any special requirements for the trade licenses to be fulfilled?
Yes, for each license there are some requirements whereby, for most of the licenses, these requirements are quite basic and only some licenses require additional approvals.
Standard licenses are, for example, trading, consulting and commercial. The standard requirements for such licenses slightly differ from Free Trade Zone to Free Trade Zone and are normally as follows:
- Higher education diploma of the company director.
- Short business description to be prepared and provided to FTZ administration.
- The company shall fulfil the minimum office size requirements (which can be different deepening on FTZ or LLC requirements – from service desk to regular office of some certain size).
- Required share capital – the requirements depend on the type of the license and the FTZ – can be from 0 to AED 1 mio. and higher whereby share capital of 1 mio. and higher is applicable only in some certain special cases, for example, for real estate agency.
Special additional approvals are required for specialized licenses, for example:
- University – such license requires additional approval of the Ministry of Education of UAE.
- Travel agency – such license requires additional approval from Ministry of Tourism of UAE.
Companies with standard trade licenses may also require additional approvals. Example – if the trading company deals with hazardous materials it needs special approvals to handle with such.
Such additional approvals follow the idea of making sure that the services which are to be provided by the company are fully in line with the quality and safety standards of UAE.
Our professional advisors team has extensive experience in preparing all the required documents and obtaining the licenses for practically any type of business activities in Dubai and other Emirates of the UAE.
