Khalid Abdulla Al Mana, QDB’s Executive Director of Business Finance Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula
DOHA: Qatar Development Bank (QDB) has revealed that it has disbursed over QR1.5bn loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), including micro businesses, over the last 10 months of this year, which is already above the target set for 2018, said a senior official of the state-backed agency.
The QDB, which is mainly responsible for developing and supporting SMEs in the non-hydrocarbons sector, with an aim to achieve economic diversification in the country, offers all kinds of possible support under a wide range of products and services, to establish and promote such businesses, which include providing easy access to financing.
The financing is done through different ways, including its Al Dhameen programme- a popular credit guarantee scheme by QDB.
“We have achieved above the target for this year in terms of SME-financing. Till date we have disbursed about QR1.5bn.
As we still have more than two months to go, this number is expected to increase further, which is going to be much above the initial target of about QR1.4bn. And for 2019, QDB is expected to increase the funding by 15- 20 percent,” Khalid Abdulla Al Mana, QDB’s Executive Director of Business Finance, told The Peninsula.
Al Mana added: “The beneficiaries of these funding went to SMEs from almost all sectors, but the food and food processing firms witnessed a remarkable growth.
However, a significant portion of that was disbursed to industrial financing and also for projects in the education, healthcare, tourism and other important sectors.”
He said that achieving industrial diversification through SME development continues to be the core of QDB’s strategy as it is going to be the engine of economic growth in future, but we are also giving special focus to companies which are contributing to achieve food security in the country.
The concerted efforts on the part of various government agencies, including QDB, and the private sector to achieve economic diversification to allay the country’s dependence on volatile revenues from hydrocarbons sector, have started bearing fruitful results.
For instance, Qatar’s non-oil exports registered a strong growth during August 2018 with the combined value reaching at QR2.26bn, recording an increase of 26.1 percent (year-on-year) compared to QR1.79bn for the corresponding month last year.
Asked about the contribution of QDB-funded projects to the national income, Al Mana said that the exact numbers were not readily available, however, he noted that concerted efforts to diversifying the economy from the oil & gas sector, which is a very big industry, has been accelerated.
But given the huge size of Qatar’s hydrocarbons sector, industrial diversification continues to be a challenging task.
“We at QDB maintain a target for each sector, and have dedicated resources and managers who monitor the diversification target,” said Al Mana.
On QDB’s funding for the agriculture sector, especially the fisheries, he said that the agency has already achieved above targets in all fronts in this sector.
Commenting about the impact of government’s ‘single window’ initiative, which allows investors quick access to all the needful facilities to own a factory within 72 hours, Al Mana said: “Of course it played a significant role as the potential investors receive the licenses and other facilities such as land plots and financing though QDB very quickly.
In addition, the efforts under ‘Jahez’ initiatives, which offered plots of land for new and existing SMEs, and Manateq, also played significant role.”
According to latest reports the Coordinating Committee for the Single Window System Management has managed to establish over 5,000 local companies and 80 international firms till date and has reduced the time spent on the process of issuing licenses from one year and half to 72 hours only.
