The time is fast approaching for Dubai to pay back its $20bn bailout from the financial crisis to its Abu Dhabi lenders and it needs to find an “amicable solution”, rating agency Moody’s warned in a note published yesterday.

Next year will be pivotal for Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirate city-states, when its government $20bn debt wall comes due. In the heart of the financial crisis in 2009, Dubai borrowed $20bn from fellow emirate, Abu Dhabi, to bail out its holding company, Dubai World, which manages a variety of property and leisure developments for the Dubai government.