Debt-ridden Dubai developer Nakheel says that work on its Jumeirah Golf Estates project – whose Greg Norman-designed Earth course will play host to the European Tour’s season-ending Dubai World Championship in two weeks time – is to restart, after the government of the emirate provided state support.

Main contractor Ascon is expected to return to work on the project in the near future. Two of the planned four Jumeirah courses, Fire and Earth, have been finished, and many hundreds of villas sit, almost complete but empty, across the large property, located on the Emirates Road to the south of Dubai. 

Even with this support from the Dubai government, though, it seems unlikely that any progress will be made with the two other courses, Water and Wind, in the foreseeable future. Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of rival Dubai developer Emaar, recently said that the emirates’ property market needed twenty months to absorb the oversupply of both commercial and residential real estate, but this estimate has been widely criticised as over-optimistic. Dubai property prices have dropped by 50 per cent since the emirates’ economy tanked in 2009.