Dubai-listed Arabtec Holding, the largest contractor by market value in the United Arab Emirates ( UAE), posted on Monday a 16 percent drop in profit for the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period last year.

The company profited 134.5 million dirhams (about 36.6 million U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of 2010, Arabian Business, a Dubai-based business journal, said on its website, citing a posting on the Dubai Financial Market.

However, the result was an improvement on the previous quarter when the company posted its first ever quarterly loss after a charge of about 80 million dollars for bad debts, the report said.

Arabtec, which called off its proposed 1.7 billion dollars stake sale deal with Abu Dhabi-based Aabar Investments last month, made profits of 161 million dirhams in the first quarter of 2009, down from 231.4 million dirhams in the same period of the previous year.[Read More]