The UAE signs USD 5-billion in arms deals during a defense show in Abu Dhabi amid a global financial crisis that has hit Arab Persian Gulf states.

Major-General Obaid al-Ketbi said the contracts included a deal with Italy's Fincantieri to supply an anti-submarine warship and another with US companies of Boeing and Lockheed Martin for military transport aircrafts.

Some 897 companies from 50 countries participated in the five-day biennial International Defense Exhibition in Emirate's Abu Dhabi.

Contracts signed in the exhibition showed a five-fold rise compared with the same deals at the last show in 2007 despite a global financial crisis and slump in oil prices.

"There is no arms race in the region," Ketbi claimed. "We have a strategic plan ... Each country focuses on its plans”.

Also in December, the UAE signed deals totaling nearly USD 4 billion with two major US defense firms, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, according to UAE daily The National.

Earlier this month, Raytheon Co. said it had won a USD 246 million contract to provide spare parts and related service for Patriot missile systems owned by the UAE.

The Persian Gulf country first purchased the Patriot air and missile defense system in December for USD 3.3 billion.

All this is while the UAE is being hit hard by the global financial crisis, sending the emirates' recently booming economy into an uncertain tailspin.

Growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter would fall to low-single-digit levels by the of this year and in 2010.

The UAE's economic growth is predicted to fall by more than half to 3.1 per cent this year from 7.5 last year on lower oil output and slowing consumer spending.

The country's property sector is also one of the main sectors hit by the global financial crisis and banks are reining in expansion.

DB/MMA