Featured by OBG
While known primarily for its vast gas reserves prior to 2010, Qatar’s global profile received a major boost that year when it was chosen to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, leading to a significant increase in infrastructure development throughout the country. Qatar is now leveraging its natural resources to become a knowledge-based, diversified economy, and it is looking to attract greater foreign direct investment to further develop its non-oil growth engines, such as tourism, sports, financial services, technology, real estate and logistics.
After facing headwinds such as depressed international energy prices, and rising debt and fiscal imbalances, Trinidad and Tobago’s economic recession appears to be turning a corner, with GDP growth projected to climb to 0.3% in 2017 and 3.4% in 2018. As one of the largest and most diversified economies in the English-speaking Caribbean, the country is beginning to benefit from the new administration’s process of fiscal adjustment and economic diversification, spurred on by an ambitious public works pipeline.
Over the last two decades Peru has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. Remarkably resilient to global headwinds, positive GDP growth has continued despite the end of the commodities boom. Yet the growth rate has slowed and the initial impetus of a first wave of structural reforms has faded. The question now is whether the current administration can address problems, implement further reforms and re-accelerate the economy.
While reduced oil prices are undoubtedly a concern for the emirate’s authorities, economic diversification efforts of recent years mean Abu Dhabi is well placed to weather a prolonged period of subdued prices. Vision 2030 meanwhile contains a raft of goals that will further reduce the emirate’s reliance on hydrocarbons, and continue to foster the emergence of a more sustainable and knowledge-based economy in the years ahead.
Positioned between west and east Asia, Sri Lanka sits on a major maritime route between Europe and the Far East and its natural resources have made it a trading centre for millennia.
Following a landmark peace agreement and a late-2016 tax reform package, 2017 looks to be a year of significant promise for Colombia. The country has been in recovery since the 2014 collapse in oil prices, which predominantly affected exports, government revenues and the exchange rate. However, with the external sector acting as a shock absorber, the authorities helped ensure that domestic demand was able to pick up some of the slack.
