DOHA: Qatar’s journey to fame and fortune and as the world’s top liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter has not been without struggle, says the Foreign Minister.
The country had massive hydrocarbon resources also in the early 20th century, but lacked the capability to exploit them, said
H E Dr Khalid Al Attiyah.
At the time there were just a few small clusters of villages in the country and they were largely dependent on pearl-diving, fishing and animal breeding.
In the 1920s, the pearl-diving business literally collapsed and the country slipped into a state of slowdown.
A great depression set in later, and by the 1930s it led to an acute food shortage.
This, the foreign minister said, forced many people living here to migrate to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.
Al Attiyah was recounting Qatar’s brief history in a talk he gave yesterday at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in the US.
Oil was discovered a little later and that was a turning point in Qatar’s history, Al Attiyah said, as students and faculty members of Princeton University listened in rapt attention.
Qatar became an oil exporter and revenues from exports began strengthening its economy, and in a brief span its community became prosperous.
So, from a sleepy pearl-diving and fishing country until a century ago, it has been a giant leap for Qatar to emerge as the world’s leading LNG producer and exporter.
The Woodrow Wilson School was set up in 1930 and it is in this context that the foreign minister spoke of Qatar’s history.
“The world was facing almost the same problems then as it does today. The global economy was debt-laden.”
As for Qatar itself, there is a massive difference between what it was in 1930 and what it is now, said the foreign minister.
Talking of the present, he said: “Our leaders took the bold step of exploiting our gas reserves and making the country a major global LNG player”.
“Our leaders put the country on the path to modernism.”
Today, Qatar is a major world destination for investors, including for US businesses. The US is the largest foreign investor in Qatar today and the biggest exporter, said Al Attiyah. More than 120 US companies operate here.
And US exports to Qatar amounted to a whopping $3.8bn in 2013, a figure that nearly doubled in a year from 2012, Qatar News Agency reported yesterday.
Al Attiyah also made a reference to Education City in Doha and said it was a prime example of Qatar-US cooperation in the field of education.
The Education City is today benefiting students from some 85 countries from across the world, he said.
THE PENINSULA
