DUBAI, April 21 (Xinhua) -- The Dubai Statistics Center (DSC) said Saturday in a statement that Dubai's gross domestic product (GDP) reached 389 billion dirham (105 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, up 2.63 percent year on year.

According to DSC, the transportation and storage sector contributed 18.5 percent to the total economic growth, surpassing the wholesale and retail trade, traditionally the largest sector in the emirate.

Arif Al Mehairi, Executive Director of the DSC, said wholesale and retail trade in 2017, worth 103.6 billion dirham, took up 26.6 percent of Dubai's real GDP and grew at a rate of 0.9 percent.

He said that the real estate sector accounted for 7.1 percent of Dubai's real GDP.

Prices for real estate have come under pressure in recent years due to an oversupply of new units, especially in the upper price segment, according to Jesse Downs, managing director of Phidar Advisory. For 2018, she does not expect a turnaround in prices due to "weaker demand."

The economic growth rate in Dubai slowed slightly in 2017, after the business metropolis of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) gained a 2.9-percent year-on-year growth in 2016, Dubai daily The Gulf Today reported citing the released Dubai Economic Report.

In order to stimulate the emirate which has a total population of approximately 2.5 million people, Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, also the Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE, launched earlier last week a number of initiatives aimed at further boosting economic growth, UAE state news agency WAM reported.

The areas the Dubai government targets with these initiatives are "ease of doing business, cost of doing business, attractive investment-friendly environment, competitiveness, and sustainability," the report cited the ruler of Dubai.