Reuters A wave of buying in beaten down blue-chip stock Emaar Properties boosted the Dubai market on Wednesday while most of the region traded quietly in modest volumes. Dubai’s index firmed by 0.5 percent, but remains the Gulf’s worst-performing index this year with a decline of 2.5 percent, partly because of a sustained slump in the emirate’s real estate market. …

Bloomberg The future is electric for BP Plc, though it’s not giving up on oil just yet. The British company bumped up its forecast for electric vehicles by 80 percent to 180 million by 2035, according to an energy outlook. It expects a third of the miles driven in 2040 will be powered by electricity. The company forecasts the abundance …

MANAMA / Reuters Bahrain will go ahead with imposing a value-added tax to stren-gthen state finances, Minister of Finance Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Khalifa said on Wednesday, after domestic political opposition slowed the plan. “We’ll be working with parliament on VAT and aim to have everything set up by the end of 2018,” Sheikh Ahmed told an investment conference in …