Qatar Is An Attractive Home For Investors: Official

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Deepak John | The Peninsula

Qatar is strongly committed to economic growth, diversification and developing new opportunities for international investors. There are significant growth opportunities in all sectors of the Qatari Economy as the country boasts a world-class climate for business and investment, said an official. 

Yanal Qatami, Senior Executive of Investor Relations, investment Promotion Agency Qatar (IPA Qatar) shared in a presentation the business environment in Qatar and facilities granted to investors and how IPA Qatar can help Norwegian investors during Qatar-Norway Business Meeting organised by Qatar Chamber at its headquarters, recently.

Qatar offers a top notch education, world-class healthcare, friendly neighbourhoods for families making it an attractive home for investors.“IPA Qatar is the International Promotion Agency formed in 2019. We are the door opener for all Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) to bring into Qatar. We try to give as much of facilitation, information, and support to all the foreign investors. Once we have the client engagement with potential investors, we connect them with the licensing platforms who provide 100 percent ownership.” 

Citing the list of licensing platforms, Qatami noted that MoCI provides 100 percent ownership in certain sectors, the second one is Qatar Financial Center (QFC) which is for professional services and thirdly, Qatar Free Zone Authority, they own and operate two state-of-the-art free zones which were developed in the last five years. 

He explained that part of our mandate is provide opportunity for investors and link them with right shareholders.“We have 85 plus nationalities in Qatar and the country is second LNG exporter with the largest reserve of natural gas. We have a very high human development index, 5.5 average GDP growth in the non-hydrocarbon sectors and we also have some certain sectors that have been developed like fintech, media, tourism, sports, manufacturing. So, this is very important factor for Qatar to diversify its economy which aligns with the Qatar National Vision 2030. 

Qatar has a very healthy trade balance - export versus import and there is very significant growth in terms of opportunities in different sectors. The infrastructure and logistics has been booming a lot in the last few years. Also, financial services under Qatar Financial Centre, entrepreneurial tech advancement as well as tourism professional services and agriculture, he noted. 

In terms of foreign investors and ease of doing business in Qatar, Qatami elaborated that“Qatar is one of the most stable, resilient and competitive economies in the world. The country has world-class climate for business and investment. It is a very vibrant and knowledge-based economy and in terms of the logistics Qatar is very uniquely positioned with in the Middle East with access to different continents around the world.”

 Also speaking during the event, Majed Ali Al Amari, Qatar Financial Centre discussed the business-friendly ecosystem of Qatar. He said,“QFC since its establishment has the same idea as all the stakeholders in the country with the 2030 Vision. Qatar-Norway bilateral relations have been great and in late May 2022 we had 8 Norwegian companies that are active under the Qatar Financial Centre.”

Speaking about the statistics of the bilateral trade during past few years, Al Amari noted that Norway's imports from Qatar were $26.72m during 2021 and Norway's exports to Qatar were $151.74m during 2021. In the year 2020 Norway exported $45.5m to Qatar in machinery, fish etc and there was also the recent agreement that happened recently which was the biggest investment in one single contract between Qatar and Norway.

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