Nafis & Emiratisation Quota UAE 2026: What the 2% Rule Really Costs Employers

The Nafis programme (formally the Emirati Talent Competitiveness Council initiative) is the most consequential labour-market policy the UAE federal government has launched in a decade. For private-sector employers it has reshaped the cost curve of headcount growth, introduced a binding quota regime with real fines, and folded the General Pension and Social Security Authority, Nafis and MoHRE into a single data layer that scores every establishment month by month. For UAE nationals, it turned the private sector, historically a marginal employer of citizens, into a competitive career destination through salary top-ups, pension cover, training grants and child allowances that close the long-standing wage gap with public-sector roles.

This guide walks employers through what Nafis is, how the 2% annual quota works in 2026, what the AED 108,000-per-shortfall fine looks like in practice, how the 2023 expansion to 20-49 employee firms changed the field, which skill levels count and how to classify them, the Tier 1/2/3 establishment scoring that determines fee reductions, the most common compliance mistakes we see across UAE SMEs, and how Velmont Crest supports the accounting side of Emiratisation cost planning.

What is Nafis?

Nafis is the UAE’s federal Emiratisation framework, launched in September 2021 by the Emirati Talent Competitiveness Council and rolled out across 2022 through MoHRE. The name (نافس, meaning “compete” in Arabic) captures the policy objective: making the private sector a competitive career path for UAE nationals.

The programme works on two sides that pull against each other. For the employee, there’s the incentive layer: salary top-up payments, GPSSA pension contributions, training grants and child allowances, all designed to close the historical wage gap between public and private sectors. For the employer, there’s the obligation: a binding 2% annual Emirati headcount increase for skilled roles in firms with 50 or more employees, extended to 20-49 employee firms across 14 priority sectors from 2023. Miss the target and a per-Emirati shortfall fine kicks in, escalating yearly, billed monthly through MoHRE and blocking new work permits until it’s cleared.

Nafis sits inside the administrative perimeter of the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation for delivery, but holds an independent policy mandate from the Council. You will see the programme written both ways in English — Emiratisation with an “s” is the UAE government’s own spelling, while Emiratization with a “z” turns up in international coverage and in some employer handbooks. They are the same policy. The operational portal is nafis.gov.ae, where UAE nationals create profiles, employers register vacancies and the Council disburses salary top-ups, training grants and child allowances directly to participating Emirati employees.

How the Nafis Emiratisation quota in the UAE works (and where it isn’t what it seems)

The UAE Cabinet’s Emiratisation framework, administered through MoHRE, is the legal anchor for the headline Emiratisation quota. It requires every private-sector establishment in mainland UAE with 50 or more employees to increase its Emirati headcount in skilled categories by 2 percentage points per year.

The cumulative target trajectory the Ministry publishes is:

• End of 2024. 6% Emirati in skilled categories.
• End of 2025. 8%.
• End of 2026. 10% (official target, delivered under MoHRE’s semi-annual mechanism as roughly one percentage point by 30 June and a further point by 31 December).
• 2027 and beyond. Subject to future Cabinet announcement; no formal target has yet been published.

The headcount baseline is the establishment’s MoHRE-registered skilled headcount — the roles in occupational Levels 1 to 5 (covered in the next section). Lower-skilled and elementary roles do not count in the denominator. A firm with 200 skilled employees needs 20 Emiratis on its books by end-2026 to meet the 10% cumulative target. That is 20 of the skilled subset, not 20 of total headcount.

Compliance is measured at half-yearly checkpoints (30 June and 31 December) using MoHRE’s establishment dashboard. The dashboard pulls the skilled headcount from the work permit register, the Emirati headcount from the MoHRE-Nafis register, and outputs a real-time compliance ratio with the gap and the contingent fine quantum.

If you sit in the 20-49 employee band, read this

Ministerial Resolution No. 455 of 2023 extended the Emiratisation regime to private-sector establishments with 20-49 employees in 14 priority sectors, with the first Emirati hire due by the end of 2024. The covered sectors are:

• Information and communication
• Financial and insurance activities
• Real estate
• Professional, scientific and technical activities
• Administrative and support services
• Education
• Healthcare and social work
• Construction
• Wholesale and retail trade
• Transportation and storage
• Accommodation and food services
• Mining and quarrying
• Manufacturing
• Arts and entertainment

For firms in these 14 sectors with 20-49 employees, the requirement is more modest: one Emirati hire by end-2024 and a further Emirati hire by end-2025, with subsequent increments tracking the headline 2% rule. The 2026 expectation for most small firms in scope is that they sit at one or two Emirati employees and continue building from there.

This expansion is the structural change most SME founders we advise still under-appreciate. A firm that crossed the 20-employee mark in 2024 and now sits at 28 people is fully in scope and needs at least one Emirati on payroll. And the small-firm tier carries its own contribution under Article 2(1) of Ministerial Resolution No. 455 of 2023 — AED 96,000 from January 2025 where no UAE national was appointed in 2024, and AED 108,000 from January 2026 where none was appointed in 2025. For a 28-person business, that’s not a line item, it’s a crisis.

Does the Nafis Emiratisation quota apply to free zone companies?

This is the single most common scope question we field, and the answer turns on where your employees’ work permits sit rather than on the “free zone” label alone. The Nafis Emiratisation quota UAE regime is administered through MoHRE, so it applies to establishments whose staff are sponsored on MoHRE work permits. Companies inside a free zone usually sponsor visas and contracts through their own free-zone authority, which runs a separate labour regime — so free-zone treatment varies, and many purely free-zone entities have historically fallen outside the 2% MoHRE quota and its per-Emirati shortfall fine.

Treat that as a fact to verify, not a blanket exemption. Several things decide it in practice: whether the entity holds any MoHRE-registered contracts, whether it runs a mainland branch alongside the free-zone licence, and whether the specific free zone has set its own Emiratisation expectations. Financial free zones such as the DIFC and ADGM sit under their own authorities and warrant a direct check.

If your group runs both a free-zone company and a mainland entity, test each establishment on its own register rather than assuming the whole group is in or out. And if a free-zone structure is on the table partly to stay outside the quota, weigh the wider trade-offs first — the Qualifying Free Zone Person corporate-tax conditions usually matter more to the decision than the Emiratisation line. Confirm your position directly with MoHRE and your free-zone authority.

Which skill levels count

MoHRE classifies every private-sector role into one of nine occupational levels. The first five are treated as skilled, and it is the skilled headcount — not total headcount — that forms the Emiratisation base:

• Level 1 — Legislators, senior managers and business executives.
• Level 2 — Professionals in scientific, technical and human fields (engineers, accountants, lawyers, medical practitioners).
• Level 3 — Technicians and associate professionals.
• Level 4 — Clerical and writing professionals.
• Level 5 — Service and sales occupations.

To count as skilled, a role generally has to sit in one of these five levels, be backed by an attested post-secondary certificate, and pay a basic salary of at least AED 4,000 a month. Levels 6 to 9 — skilled agricultural workers, craftsmen, machine and plant operators, and elementary occupations — sit outside the skilled base and are not counted in the denominator.

Two implications matter. First, an establishment with a heavy Level 6-9 footprint (construction, hospitality, logistics) has a smaller skilled denominator than its total headcount would suggest, so its Emirati hiring target in absolute numbers is lower. Second, MoHRE actively audits classification — pushing a genuinely skilled role into a lower occupational level, or below the AED 4,000 threshold, to shrink the quota base is a common manipulation, and one of the targeted enforcement priorities in 2026.

The classification is set at the work permit application stage on tasheel.ae. Once registered, changing the classification requires cancelling and re-issuing the permit, which carries fees and may interrupt the employee’s residency stamping. Get it right the first time — and document the justification (job description, qualification proof, salary band) in the establishment file in case of a MoHRE classification audit.

How to calculate your Nafis Emiratisation quota in the UAE

Working out the number is simpler than most employers expect, and the exact Nafis Emiratisation quota UAE figure turns on one variable: your skilled headcount. Take the count of employees sitting in the skilled occupational levels (Levels 1 to 5) on your MoHRE work-permit register — lower-skilled and elementary roles are excluded from the base. Multiply that skilled count by the cumulative target for the compliance period (6% at end-2024, 8% at end-2025, 10% at end-2026), then round up to the next whole person, the way MoHRE’s dashboard does. That gives the number of Emirati nationals you need on the books at the checkpoint.

A worked run helps. A firm with 120 skilled employees needs 12 Emiratis by end-2026 to sit at the 10% cumulative target. A firm with 80 skilled roles needs 8. Where the maths lands between two whole numbers it rounds up — a skilled base of 75 gives 7.5 at 10%, so the requirement is 8 Emiratis, not 7.

Two traps recur. Employers count total headcount instead of the skilled subset and over-hire; or they forget the base moves as they grow, so a target met in June slips back out of compliance by December. Re-run the sum every time the skilled headcount changes, and check it against your live MoHRE establishment dashboard rather than a spreadsheet snapshot. Our WPS and payroll reconciliation routine keeps that skilled count current month to month.

AED 108,000 per shortfall, in practice

The per-Emirati shortfall contribution is the operational core of the Nafis enforcement architecture. Article 3(1) of Ministerial Resolution No. 279 of 2022 sets it as a fixed monthly amount that escalates each year: AED 6,000 monthly from January 2023, “increasing progressively by Dh1,000 each year”. The trajectory that produces, with the annual totals worked out as twelve months of the prevailing rate:

• 2023 — AED 6,000/month (AED 72,000/year) per missing Emirati
• 2024 — AED 7,000/month (AED 84,000/year)
• 2025 — AED 8,000/month (AED 96,000/year)
• 2026 — AED 9,000/month (AED 108,000/year), effective 1 January 2026

The fine is per missing Emirati, billed monthly at the prevailing rate for the compliance year. A firm that needs 10 Emiratis by 31 December 2026 and ends the year with 6 carries a 4-Emirati shortfall, which converts to AED 432,000 of annual fines at the 2026 rate (4 × AED 108,000). The fine accrues from the first day of the new compliance period and is invoiced through MoHRE.

The operational sharp edge is the permit-block linkage. An unpaid Nafis fine, even AED 27,000 for a single missing Emirati at three months’ billing, blocks every new work permit application, every renewal, every contract registration and every quota adjustment for the establishment. The block lifts only when the fine is paid in full. For a growing SME running a hiring pipeline, the fine block is more damaging than the cash impact. It paralyses recruitment, freezes contract renewals and signals to MoHRE that the establishment may need a targeted inspection.

The full schedule in Article 2 of Cabinet Decision 43 of 2025 is worth reading rather than summarising, because the heaviest number in it is not the sham-Emiratisation line at all.

Item 9 is the one to read twice. Reclassifying a genuinely skilled role downward to shrink the quota denominator is the exact manipulation described earlier in this guide, and it is priced at AED 100,000 the first time and AED 500,000 by the third — against AED 20,000 to AED 100,000 for sham Emiratisation. Article 6(8) adds that the establishment must still achieve the annual target calculated on its position before the circumvention, so the fine buys nothing.

Three further provisions matter operationally. Under Article 3(1), the owner of the entity is liable to repay all benefit amounts the employee received where violations 1, 2, 4, 5 or 8 are established. Under Article 6(2), more than one penalty may be imposed where more than one violation is committed. And under Article 6(7), paying the fine does not preclude referral of the establishment or the beneficiary to the Public Prosecution. Appeals go to the Ministry in writing within 10 days of notification and are determined within 20 days (Article 4).

What Nafis offers the UAE nationals you hire

The incentive side of the programme is what makes private-sector employment financially competitive for UAE nationals. Most of it is paid by the Council directly to the employee rather than channelled through the employer, which is why it rarely shows up in an employer’s own payroll analysis. What follows is taken from the Council’s own scheme pages as they stood on 5 August 2026 — where the Council does not publish an amount, this guide does not supply one.

• Emirati Salary Support Scheme. In the Council’s own words, eligible nationals “are eligible for a top-up of the difference between their salary and the relevant target salary, no greater than a specified ceiling amount.” Nafis publishes neither the target salary nor the ceiling on that page (nafis.gov.ae, checked 5 August 2026), so any specific dirham figure you have been shown for the top-up came from somewhere other than the Council. What it does publish is the eligibility gate, and that gate is unusually detailed — see the table below.
• Child Allowance Scheme. This one Nafis does publish: AED 600 per child per month, for employees on a monthly salary of less than AED 50,000, covering a maximum of four children (nafis.gov.ae, checked 5 August 2026). The allowance runs for sons until they reach maturity or join the workforce, and for daughters until marriage or joining the workforce. Female citizens qualify in their own right where the husband is deceased, retired (for children born after retirement), or where a court order and proof of the husband’s inability to earn are produced.
• Pension support. The Council describes this as “a five-year government support plan for the pension contribution of Emirati employees through a rebate, as well as support for the contribution of private sector employers” — a rebate mechanism, not a replacement for what the employer owes. The underlying obligation is set out in the next section.
• Training and development. Subsidised, accredited upskilling delivered through the Nafis platform, alongside on-the-job training support and an apprentice programme for recent graduates. Confirm the current grant terms with the Council.
• Unemployment benefit. Financial support for up to six months following involuntary job loss in the private sector, per the Council’s own description of the scheme.

The combined effect can lift an Emirati employee’s total monthly package above the employer’s contracted basic salary. The employer pays the contracted salary plus normal benefits; the Council-funded components sit on top. Two of those components come with eligibility conditions that catch employers out, because failing them is the employee’s problem operationally but the employer’s problem commercially:

Source: the Emirati Salary Support Scheme and Child Allowance Scheme pages on nafis.gov.ae, read in full on 5 August 2026. Note the “shareholding” row in particular — a founder who puts a family member on the cap table and then registers them as an Emirati hire has disqualified them from both schemes without necessarily realising it.

What the employer actually owes GPSSA

The pension picture is the one employers most often get backwards, because the Nafis rebate is easy to mistake for the contribution itself. The GPSSA employer guideline hosted on nafis.gov.ae sets out the position under Federal Decree-Law No. 57 of 2023, which applies to first-time contributors from 31 October 2023 onward:

Source: “Monthly Contribution Employer Guideline”, GPSSA, published at nafis.gov.ae/files/examples/, read 5 August 2026. The 12.5% figure circulates widely as “the old rate under the previous law” — it is not. It is the 15% employer share less the 2.5% the government carries for salaries below AED 20,000, and it is current.

One more federal number belongs in the same budget line. From 1 January 2026 the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation set the minimum wage for Emiratis in the private sector at AED 6,000 per month, the third step of a phased path that ran AED 4,000, then AED 5,000. Applications to issue, renew or amend an Emirati work permit below that figure are blocked, and employers have until 30 June 2026 to bring existing Emirati staff up to it; from 1 July 2026 underpaid citizens can be excluded from Emiratisation-quota calculations and new work permits withheld (mohre.gov.ae announcement dated 31 December 2025, checked 5 August 2026).

Tier 1, 2 and 3 — what each unlocks

MoHRE classifies every private-sector establishment into one of three categories (Tiers) under Cabinet Resolution No. 18 of 2022, effective 1 June 2022. The classification drives the fee structure for work permits, contract registrations and other MoHRE services, and Emiratisation performance feeds directly into the Tier calculation.

• Tier 1. Establishments that meet or exceed the Emiratisation quota and demonstrate workforce diversity, training investment and compliance discipline. Tier 1 firms get the lowest fee schedule (work permit fees as low as AED 250 for Skill Level 1-3 hires), priority processing and reduced inspection frequency.
• Tier 2. Establishments that meet the basic quota and licence requirements but do not qualify for Tier 1 benefits. Standard fee schedule.
• Tier 3. Establishments with quota shortfalls, repeat compliance issues or failed inspections. Highest fee schedule (work permit fees several times higher than Tier 1), additional documentation requirements at every transaction, and elevated inspection frequency.

For a firm hiring 30+ new permits a year, the Tier 1 vs Tier 3 fee differential alone can be six figures. Combined with the avoided shortfall fine and the lighter inspection footprint, Tier 1 status is a real commercial advantage. It follows directly from running a clean Nafis programme.

How to register your firm and Emirati hires on Nafis

Getting counted starts with registration, and the mechanics sit across two portals. As an employer you work through the MoHRE establishment channel and the nafis.gov.ae platform: confirm the establishment record and its skilled headcount are current, then post genuine vacancies so open Emirati roles are visible to jobseekers on the national talent pool. UAE nationals create their own profiles on Nafis and apply; the salary top-up, training grant and child allowance are claimed by the employee with the Council, not lodged by you.

For a hire to count toward your quota, the classification matters more than the paperwork. The Emirati employee’s role is registered at the work-permit stage on tasheel.ae under a Skill Level 1 to 3 code, the contract is recorded with MoHRE, and the employee is paid through the Wage Protection System like any other worker. Once that chain is complete, the individual shows on your MoHRE establishment dashboard as an Emirati in a skilled role and lifts your compliance ratio.

Two practical notes. Register the hire promptly — a genuine Emirati employee who is working but not yet reflected on the register does nothing for your checkpoint position. And keep the supporting file (job description, qualification proof, salary band) ready, because the same record that proves the role is real is the one a MoHRE audit will ask to see.

The compliance calendar your HR team needs

The discipline that separates establishments hitting Tier 1 from those drifting into Tier 3 is a 90-day Emiratisation calendar that runs alongside the standard MoHRE compliance calendar:

• January / July. Pull the MoHRE establishment dashboard, reconcile skilled headcount and Emirati count, update the contingent fine quantum in the management accounts.
• February / August. Review the Nafis vacancy postings, confirm any open Emirati roles are advertised, and check that any pending salary top-up applications for new Emirati hires have been registered with the Council. Employers that lean on third-party sourcing should ensure their vendor holds a valid licence under the recruitment agency in Dubai framework, not just an HR consulting permit.
• March / September. Refresh the operating plan with the next half-year’s Emirati hiring requirement, confirm budget for the fully-loaded cost (basic + top-up administration + GPSSA + training + child allowance).
• April / October. Run mid-period payroll reconciliation, confirm WPS submissions for Emirati employees match the Nafis register, address any flagged discrepancies before the half-year checkpoint.
• May / November. Engage with the Nafis Council on any salary top-up renewals due, confirm training grants claimed within the year.
• June / December. Finalise the half-year compliance position, lodge any reclassification adjustments, prepare the management commentary on the year’s Emiratisation programme for inclusion in the annual financial statements.

The calendar is not glamorous. It is six recurring tasks, twelve times a year. Establishments that run it as routine never trip the Day 5 permit block. Establishments that treat it as a year-end fire drill spend Q4 negotiating with MoHRE and bridging payroll through the permit-block window.

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The Emiratisation programmes that work are the ones designed as real hiring programmes — with real onboarding, real training, real progression and real attendance. The ones that fail are the ones designed as compliance theatre — a salary going out to a name on a sheet. The first builds long-term capability and Tier 1 status; the second buys a short pause before a catastrophic enforcement event. There is no middle path in 2026.

Where employers trip up

Across the UAE establishments we work alongside on the accounting and payroll side, the same Nafis mistakes recur with painful regularity:

1. Token hiring at the threshold. Firms approaching the 50-employee mark hire one Emirati at the threshold, declare victory, and miss the 2% annual increment from year two onwards. The fine catches up within 18 months. The fix is to build Emirati hiring into the operating plan from the 45-employee mark, with a candidate pipeline running 6 months ahead of need.

2. Ghost positions. Recording an Emirati on the books without a genuine role, real attendance and meaningful work product. MoHRE’s joint inspections with Nafis are increasingly sophisticated: biometric attendance cross-checks, WPS-to-GL reconciliation, on-site interviews. Phantom positions get caught, and the exposure is now priced in Article 2 of Cabinet Decision 43 of 2025: AED 20,000 to AED 100,000 per worker, plus repayment by the owner of everything the employee received from the Council, plus the Ministry’s discretion under Article 6(7) to refer the matter to the Public Prosecution regardless of whether the fine is paid.

3. Wrong skill-level classification. Booking a genuinely skilled role into a lower occupational level, or below the AED 4,000 threshold, to shrink the denominator. MoHRE’s classification audits look at the job description, the qualifications and the salary band. Discrepancies trigger reclassification, retrospective fine recalculation and a flag on the establishment record.

4. Treating Nafis as HR-only. The salary top-up, GPSSA contribution and child allowance flow through the Nafis Council, but the contracted salary, pension accrual, end-of-service gratuity and statutory withholding sit in the employer’s payroll and general ledger. Treating Nafis as an HR-only programme means the management accounts under-report the true cost of Emirati employment and the corporate-tax forecast misses the deductible component. The accounting team needs the same line-by-line visibility on Nafis as on any other major payroll programme.

5. Missing the 20-49 employee threshold. Small firms in the 14 priority sectors that grew through 20-49 employees in 2024-25 without registering an Emirati hire are now in arrears. The AED 96,000 contribution for a 2024 shortfall fell due from January 2025, and AED 108,000 for a 2025 shortfall from January 2026. Founders running 25-30 employee businesses in scope need to confirm their position urgently.

6. Ignoring Tier classification. The Tier 1 vs Tier 3 fee differential is a real commercial line, but most SMEs we see never look at the establishment’s current Tier or the path to upgrade. A firm sitting in Tier 2 with a clean Emiratisation record can typically move to Tier 1 inside a single half-year cycle.

Lining Nafis up with your WPS run

The Wage Protection System and Nafis are tightly coupled at the data layer. Every Salary Information File submitted by an employer through an approved agent bank carries the employee’s MoHRE identifier; for Emirati employees, that identifier links to the Nafis register and the salary top-up audit trail. A missed WPS run for an Emirati employee triggers two enforcement vectors simultaneously: the standard WPS Day 5 permit block (covered in our MoHRE guide) and a Nafis salary continuity flag that can interrupt the federal top-up payment.

For employers, the operational discipline is the same one we apply to non-Emirati payroll: close the payroll cycle by the 25th-28th, lodge the SIF at the agent bank by the 30th, reconcile the WPS confirmation to the general ledger the same day, and cross-check the Emirati employee SIF entries against the Nafis register monthly. The 30-minute monthly reconciliation prevents the multi-week salary disruption that comes from a federal top-up interruption — disruption the Emirati employee experiences personally and that almost always feeds back into a labour-court complaint within weeks.

Where Nafis shows up in corporate tax and audit

From the corporate-tax filing perspective, the employer’s contracted salary, GPSSA accrual (where applicable), end-of-service gratuity provision and training costs for Emirati employees are deductible business expenses on the same basis as other payroll costs. The federal Nafis top-up does not flow through the employer’s books — it is paid directly to the employee by the Council — and therefore is not a deductible expense for the employer. The accounting team needs to ensure the two flows are kept distinct in the management accounts, otherwise the corporate-tax computation either double-counts (overstating the deduction) or under-counts (missing genuine employer cost).

From the audit perspective, the Emirati headcount, contracted salary roll, GPSSA accruals and the contingent Nafis fine exposure are increasingly subject to substantive audit testing at year-end. A material contingent fine (say, AED 432,000 for a 4-Emirati shortfall) needs to be disclosed in the audited financial statements; understating it triggers an audit adjustment and, depending on materiality, a qualified opinion. For establishments approaching or crossing thresholds (Free Zone Person, Qualifying Free Zone Person, DMTT, Pillar Two), the Nafis exposure also feeds the substance and economic-activity tests.

How Velmont Crest helps

Velmont Crest’s UAE accounting specialists work inside a DED-licensed UAE accounting firm that holds official channel-partner status with Meydan Free Zone and RAKEZ and acts as a referral partner elsewhere. Our role on the Nafis side of an establishment is operational and financial, not recruitment or PRO: we model the fully-loaded Emirati employment cost into the operating plan, forecast the payroll through the planning horizon, build the WPS-to-GL reconciliation that keeps the establishment classification clean, and prepare the management commentary and financial-statement disclosures that capture the Nafis programme accurately.

We do not place candidates, file work permits, register contracts, sit at the Nafis interview or appear at MoHRE on a client’s behalf. Those services sit with specialist recruiters and PRO partners we coordinate with. The split is deliberate — accounting, payroll forecasting and compliance reporting need to be done by a regulated accounting firm, and recruitment and PRO filings need to be done by specialists in those domains.

For firms approaching or crossing the 50-employee Emiratisation threshold, our accounting and bookkeeping work layers the Nafis cost into the operating plan, the corporate-tax forecast and the audit-readiness package.

For establishments already in scope and scaling, the work also covers the half-yearly compliance reconciliation, the contingent-fine disclosure for the audited statements and the integration of the Nafis programme into the broader MoHRE compliance routine, the WPS UAE rules and salary calendar, overtime calculation under UAE labour law, UAE remote work law, the UAE work visa cycle and the Emirates ID renewal cadence.

If you are crossing the 50-employee threshold for the first time, recovering from a Nafis shortfall fine or scaling an Emirati hiring programme that needs to be modelled into the operating plan, contact our advisory team for a structured planning session.

This guide reflects Nafis and Emiratisation rules as read at primary source on 5 August 2026 — nafis.gov.ae scheme pages, the GPSSA employer guideline hosted there, Ministerial Resolution 455 of 2023, Cabinet Decision 43 of 2025 and the MoHRE minimum-wage announcement of 31 December 2025. Where the Council publishes no amount, none is given here. The Council and MoHRE publish updates regularly — consult nafis.gov.ae, mohre.gov.ae and the UAE Government Portal for the current version of any cited resolution. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice or representation; Velmont Crest is an accounting firm, not a law firm or licensed PRO.