ATTRACTED by growth prospects offered by Qatar, many global companies are now entering the country and are increasing their investments. Qatar provides a conducive financial services industry, which has attracted renowned international institutions, such as Credit Suisse, HSBC, EY and Intesa Sanpaolo among others.
The strength of Qatar’s financial services industry is evidenced by the growing interest of some of the world’s largest financial institutions, such as UBS.
The Investment Promotion Agency Qatar (IPA Qatar) and UBS have agreed to support the estab-lishment by UBS of a Business Solutions Hub in Qatar, in addition to the newly created UBS Wealth Man-agement Office in Doha, which opened its doors to regional clients last April.
The launch of a Business Solutions Hub contributes to advancing the financial digitisation in Qatar, while supporting the local talent development, as up to 200 digital experts will be employed over the next few years. Equally significant, the Hub serves UBS’s expansion strategy in the Middle East through pro-viding a centralised data and solution platform for regional clients’ services and products. Other companies have also evinced their inten-tions to foray into Qatar.
Last week, Global EdTech company, Cuemath- the one-on-one personalised math learning platform backed by Google- announced its formal market entry to Qatar. A look at QFC data also demonstrates growing confidence of global companies on Qatar’s economy.
QFC has welcomed 282 new firms to its platform in 2021, reaching 1,284 registered firms as of 31 December and surpassing its target of 1,000 companies by 2022.
The newly registered firms originated from over 60 countries, with a majority coming from India, Lebanon, Jordan, United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, France, Germany, Turkey, and Qatar.
The new firms also represented several sectors, including digital, sports, media, and financial services, QFC’s focus clusters.
The strength of Qatari economy is attracting global companies. Qatar’s economy is expected to witness a robust recovery this year. While the global economy is expected to slow down this year, Qatar’s economy is likely to grow strongly this year and next year, according to a recent report by the World Bank. Qatar is expected to outperform regional growth also as the region is likely to grow at 4.4 percent this year.
Qatar’s real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is expected to grow by 4.8 percent in 2022 and 4.9 percent in 2023, as per the latest Global Economic Prospects report released by the World Bank
