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Operating in the Gulf

Free zone against mainland, pegged currencies, VAT from zero to fifteen per cent, and the corridor into Africa.

Guides published
6
Topics covered
5
Markets
5
Currencies
5

What is different about operating here

The Gulf breaks a habit the rest of this corpus takes for granted: the local currency is not the risk. The dirham and the riyal are pegged to the dollar, so exposure moves to the yuan, euro and rupee you buy in and to the African currency your customer eventually pays in. The second habit it breaks is the assumption that a warehouse is a warehouse. Goods in a free zone sit outside the customs territory with duty suspended, and the same carton carries a different true cost depending on whether it clears into the mainland or leaves on a re-export. VAT runs at 5% in the UAE and Oman, 10% in Bahrain, 15% in Saudi Arabia and not at all in Kuwait, and the e-invoicing programmes are at genuinely different stages — which makes "GCC compliance" a phrase to distrust.

Three things that catch teams out

  1. 01

    A free zone is not a warehouse

    Duty is suspended, not waived. A system that treats the move from free zone to mainland as an internal transfer has quietly lost the moment your cost base changed, and no report afterwards can reconstruct it.

  2. 02

    The peg hides the exposure, it does not remove it

    Because the dirham does not move against the dollar, teams stop watching currency entirely. The risk simply relocated to the purchase leg and the African collection leg, where nobody is looking for it.

  3. 03

    Six countries, six regimes, one salesman

    VAT rates differ, e-invoicing mandates differ, wage protection files differ. Any vendor offering a single GCC compliance integration is describing an ambition. Ask which country it was actually built and tested against.

Tax and currency presets for this region

These are the sales-tax presets AWRA OpsHub ships with, 5 of the 88 countries covered in total. They are headline national rates and a starting point for configuration — reduced, zero-rated and exempt categories still need setting up against your own chart of accounts, and rates change with each finance act.

Market Currency Tax Standard rate
United Arab Emirates AED UAE Dirham VAT 5%
Saudi Arabia SAR Saudi Riyal VAT 15%
Oman OMR Omani Rial VAT 5%
Bahrain BHD Bahraini Dinar VAT 10%
Kuwait KWD Kuwaiti Dinar VAT 0%

6 Middle East guides

Grouped by topic, newest first within each group.

Product pages for this region

Each of these sets out what is built today and what is still on the roadmap for that market.

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