Qatar University Colleges hold panel discussion on impact of COVID-19

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Doha: Qatar University's College of Business and Economics and College of Law organized a panel discussion under the title: The financial and legal Implications of Corona Pandemic and Precautionary Measures. 

The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. Hassan Abdul Rahim Al-Sayed, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and Director of Social and Economic Survey Research Institute - SESRI at Qatar University. With the participation of Mohammed Al-Jammal, Associate Professor of Finance at Qatar University, Dr. Abdullah Abdul Karim Abdullah, Professor of Private Law at Qatar University and Dr. Faten Hawa, Associate Professor of Private Law at Qatar University, staff members and students.  

The opening session discussed the current repercussions of the Corona pandemic in terms of economic, legal aspects and the precautionary measures used to limit the spread of this crisis.

In this regard, Abdul Rahman Al-Ansari, CEO of Qatar Industrial Manufacturing Company, said: 'The private sector's view that this pandemic involved the public, private sector, governments and individuals in its consequences resulting from changing the shape of the economy in the future. The countries themselves are more concerned with food and medicine supplies, we must focus on developing the form of production which is in demand, people losing their jobs and emerging for new jobs which did not exists before. There are many future opportunities to invest in the digital domain and the use of modern technologies with easy access to services

Speaking about the impact of the crisis on the markets in general and the Qatari market in particular, Dr. Al Jammal said, 'The impact of the crisis cannot be determined yet because it has not ended and there are still effects that have not yet appeared. As the effects are not only quantitative but rather a quality that varies from sector to sector and also varies within the same sector.'The impact of the crisis on financial markets began to be evident since the end of February, as we witnessed huge decline in the history of stock exchanges since the creation of global exchanges. We see that there is a gradual recovery resulting in an increase in some markets, due to the way government is handling the pandemic, he added 

Moving to the session of the precautionary measures that aims to limit the spread of the virus and the indicators that indicate its possibility to reduce it, Dr. Hanan Abdel Rahim said, 'Countries differ from each other in the prevalence of infection, the level of resources, and the readiness of the health system. Therefore there is no magic formula that can be generalized. However, there are a set of instruction's which should be followed in countries that consider mitigating precautionary measures, the most important of which is that there is a decrease in the number of new cases recorded daily and this decrease should continue. The second consideration is that every individual carrying the symptoms of illness should be examined.

On the main legal implications during this pandemic, Dr. Abdullah Abdul Karim explained, 'The problem arose when the obligations were implemented, which no one was expecting. We cannot predict when the pandemic will end and this may make the implementation of the commitment by one of the parties to the contract or perhaps both, exhausting or impossible, because there were obstacles that arose in the implementation of these contracts due to the pandemic.

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