Following a difficult period for the international shipping market, in 2012 the container route from Shanghai to the Gulf through Dubai saw the second-highest rate of freight growth in the entire Asian region. This was part of an emerging trend of the maturation of GCCAsia trade. A relationship that was once just based on energy demand is diversifying and the GCC is seen as a viable market for Asian…
In keeping with the IMF’s recommendations, Qatar has moved to introduce a medium-term focus to its budget process, which is expected to help protect government spending from revenue volatility. These reforms have become especially pertinent, as oil prices plunged by 50% between June 2014 and early 2015. With the state now moving to plan its budget in three-year increments, planning to utilise…
The Qatari government has increasingly shifted its focus to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups as it moves to expand economic diversification and non-oil growth in the state. Start-ups and entrepreneurs will benefit as a result, with the state launching new support mechanisms for the sector, including the recently established Qatar Business Incubation Centre (QBIC), the…
Qatar, like many Gulf nations, has seen its labour requirements soar in the wake of rapid economic development and a spate of construction and infrastructure projects. With less than 300,000 Qataris living in a country of some 2.22m people, the nation’s labour force is dominated by expatriate workers, the majority of whom are from Asia. Incomes earned in Qatar represent a critical channel…
Although total foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to Qatar declined in 2013, foreign investment is thriving in Qatari industry, representing over half of all investment in the sector in 2014. As construction activity ramps up in the state, FDI in the industrial sector is expected to expand further on the back of planned industrial zones, incentives for investors in high-priority sectors and…
With oil prices bouncing along the bottom of the charts, and most forecasts suggesting they are likely to stay well submerged for some time, Qatar’s infrastructure project pipeline may now be coming on-stream at a lessthan-opportune time, although the state’s solid economic fundamentals and rapid non-oil growth will help mitigate the worst of the near-term oil shocks, and should keep expansion…
It is easy to discern the fresh momentum in the drive to boost the private sector and, more particularly, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Qatar. A number of recent developments indicate the government’s determination to create a more balanced economy for the hydrocarbons-rich state: the appointment in January 2015 of the minister of economy and commerce, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim…
Despite having one of the lowest non-performing loan (NPL) rates in the region, the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008 came as a reminder to Qatari lenders of the vulnerability of some areas of their loan books to economic distress. The high levels of personal debt in the GCC were of particular concern to regional regulators and many of them have taken steps to address the issue. Thus,…
The upgrade of the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index in May 2014, which was followed by a similar upgrade by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), was the reward of a long process of technical and regulatory reform. The genesis of this process dates back half a decade: in 2010 Qatar’s adoption of the NYSE Euronext Universal Trading Platform established it as the first…
As Qatar’s Islamic financial services (IFS) sector expands, options are multipling for investors wishing to deploy their assets in a sharia-compliant manner. A key development in this regard came in 2013, when the nation’s stock market, the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE), teamed up with Al Rayan Investment, a subsidiary of Qatar’s second-largest Islamic bank, Masraf Al Rayan, to create the…
