Dubai World said on Sunday it would complete all projects currently under construction but would delay any new developments, including a plan to build the world's tallest tower, until market conditions improve.
Dubai World unit Nakheel, developer of Dubai's palm-tree shaped islands, said in January it would halt work on a one kilometre (0.6214 mile) tall tower for a year as the former boomtown suffers from a downturn in its property market.
"The tower will be delayed until the market changes. You can't build something like that in this kind of market," Dubai World Chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said at a tourism conference.
The company had already said in January it would postpone the project for a year. Property prices in Dubai slumped about 41 percent in the first three months of 2009 compared with the fourth quarter, property consultants Colliers said last month.
The downturn has led developers to cancel or postpone hundreds of billions of dollars worth of expansion projects that had been unveiled during a six-year building boom. "Whatever is under construction will be continued. Whatever is planned will be shelved, delayed," said bin Sulayem, whose Nakheel is also building an archipelago in the form of a world map but is putting off plans to develop islands modelled after the sun, the moon and the planets. "Anything committed to we shall finish it, everything that cannot currently be financed will be delayed," he said.
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