Doha: Qatar’s gross domestic product (GDP) has expanded by four-fold within a span of nearly two decades. This happend as a result of wise leadership of the country and strategic investments of revenues generated by exploiting the natural resources of the country, said the Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Development Bank, Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa, at an international event held recently.
Speaking at a global webinar on Monday, which was hosted by the US-based think tank Atlantic Council, Al Khalifa said: “Qatar is a robust and thriving economy. It is offering promising opportunities to local and global investors and startups to invest and grow. We are one of the fastest growing economies in the region. Over the last 20 years the size of the Qatari economy has quadrupled from nearly QR200bn in 2002-2003 to QR800bn in 2019. Thanks to our wise leadership. Today we have national champions like Ooreedoo, QNB, Qatar Airways, and many more, and have developed state-of-the-art infrastructure and we are building up them.”
He said that government organizations, including QDB, are now converting those strengths to ensure a growing value chain by creating a cluster of SMEs. Qatar’s GDP for the first quarter of 2020 stood at around QR167.33bn, as per the Planning and Statistics Authority (PSA) data.
Commenting on a question of the illegal siege imposed on Qatar by the Saudi-Arabia-led Arab quartet countries in early June 2017, he said that it was a blessing in disguise as it made Qatar stronger in every respect.
“The globe is not only those four countries (siege nations). We have an amazing infrastructure, and have access to a market size of over 500 million people within 6-7 hours away that we can serve from Doha,” said Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa.
He also mentioned about the recently launched Qatar FinTech Hub (QFTH) and the overwhelming response the first wave its Incubator and Accelerator Programs received.
“When we launched the QFTH’s accelerator programme nearly 2 months ago, we attracted over 750 applications (innovative business ideas) from more than 70 countries, which is a testimony of the robust ecosystem. We have bigger markets around us, and we have strong economic relations with them, which include Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and many others. Our trade volume with all these countries have grown and will continue to grow,” noted Al Khalifa.
Speaking further about the impact of the blockade he referred to IMF’s recent report which said that Qatar is among the most resilient economies in the region which will grow by 2.5 percent in 2021-22, which is in contrast to Qatar’s neighboring countries.
“It is true that we are blessed with natural resources which have contributed to our growth story, but we are also blessed with the right and wise leadership that have invested our resources strategically into education, health, and other social and income generating sectors. We have one of the best education and healthcare system globally. We also have Qatar Foundation, which is one of the top 10 non-profit organizations in the world. We are also developing human capital that will help us achieve a diversified and sustainable knowledge-based society,” Al Khalifa added.
“The blockade did not stop us from growing, both locally as well as globally. We are one of the largest LNG exporters in the world but not a single shipment had been missed since the blockade. We were always open for business, we mean business and we are committed to the delivery of our business promises.”
About the local businesses, SMEs and startups, he said that despite the COVID-19 they have proved that they are competent and growing locally and internationally working on a strategy: survive, revive, and thrive.
"To overcome the situations created by the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted some 50 virtual training sessions for the SMEs and startups providing them the useful information about how to deal with the situation, especially for the companies in the healthcare sector, which were most affected," Al Khalifa said."
SOURCE: THEPENINSULAQATAR