Industry
From The Report: Qatar 2017
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Central to Qatar National Vision 2030, the country’s long-term development plan, is creating a competitive and diversified economy. The industrial sector plays a key role in this, broadening the scope of private sector activity, encouraging the shift to higher value-added activities and creating jobs in an increasingly knowledge and innovation-based economy. Recent times have seen the impact of the shift away from hydrocarbons dependency, despite the large share of Qatar’s GDP still contributed by its oil and gas sectors. Now though, with some industrial projects having been scaled down or put on hold due to lower oil and gas revenues in recent years, the sector has to demonstrate its resilience. Enhancing efficiency and cutting costs are thus major priorities, with leaner and more agile competitive industries the likely result. Furthermore, while the ongoing economic blockade of Qatar, which began in June 2017, presents a challenge, government entities and the private sector have pushed for initiatives to expand industries and establish new projects to boost local products and achieve self-sufficiency.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Make a move: Boosting efficiency will be key to maintaining sector growth
OBG
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Central to Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV 2030), the country’s long-term development plan, is creating a competitive and diversified economy. The industrial sector plays a key role in this, broadening the scope of private sector activity, encouraging the shift to higher value-added activities and creating jobs in an increasingly knowledge and innovation-based economy. Recent times have seen the impact of the shift away from hydrocarbons dependency, despite the large share of Qatar’s…

Analysis

The right environment: New programmes and strategies are creating a platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups
OBG
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Key to Qatar’s drive towards diversification in its economy is developing a thriving private industrial sector. The most recent national development strategy has thus sought to encourage businesses, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This support is also likely to continue in the National Development Strategy 2017-22. These are, however, challenging times for some businesses, with the decline in oil and gas prices of recent years affecting Qatar’s main…