BY MOBIN PANDIT and MOHaMED OSMAN
DOHA: Fluctuating world oil prices are causing alarm and prompting Qatar to rise up to the occasion and speed up its diversification effort, the Prime Minister said yesterday.
H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani told businessmen that the time had come to promote the private sector and rely on it for economic development.
The government, he said, didn’t want to continue with its role as an investor and direct operator of productive sectors and as a monopolist.
“The government is keen to implement development projects faster and ensure that required legislations are in place to give the private sector more opportunity in economic activities.”
The PM, who also holds the interior ministry portfolio, was speaking during his maiden interaction with the business community at the Ritz-Carlton last evening.
The meeting was held by Qatar Chamber, the representative body of the private sector.
The PM said effective policies were being framed and implemented to improve the competitiveness and productivity of private businesses.
The government would rather play a supervisory and legislative role and encourage private businesses to shoulder their responsibility, he said.
Instructions have, therefore, been given to various ministries to identify sectors which the government can support the private sector in and enhance its role, said the Premier.
One of the main issues the government is working on is to make land available for different purposes, among other things for housing, including labour accommodation, industries, warehouses, commercial activities, food security projects, health and education.
Various ministries have been asked to estimate the requirement of land for the above purposes over the next five years.
The PM said the government was fixing a time frame for completion of projects (since people have been complaining of undue delays).
Talking about the diversification effort, the PM said the good news was that the non-oil sector was performing very well. It grew 11 percent in 2013 and is expected to improve the rate to 12 percent this year.
This key sector will continue with its upward march until its ratio to the GPD has reached 50 percent.
As for the GDP itself, its growth this year is expected to be 6.2 percent. Next year also, despite falling global crude prices, the GDP is likely to grow five to six percent.
The government is bolstering the non-hydrocarbons sector through a number of measures, and one of them is to encourage the private sector, said the PM.
A board member of the Chamber, Mohamed Jawhar, said in his address at the meeting that the private sector’s situation was pathetic. The capital of 75 percent of the local companies accounted for just 20 percent of the total capital of companies in Qatar.
And two percent of the companies, including venture firms as well as foreign entities, account for 50 percent of the total capital of companies in the country.
Some 95 percent of Qatari companies are in the construction sector and the majority of them are financially hard-pressed. The majority of them have no share in government projects.
Qatari companies have a share of barely 10 percent in development projects of the government, he said.
Jawhar raised issues like shortage of land for various purposes, including warehousing and labour camps, and slow clearance of imported goods at Doha Port and other points of entry.
Mega development projects are all being launched almost simultaneously, causing a shortage of building materials that is pushing up their prices, he said.
Traffic jams on Doha’s roads were also among the problems facing the private sector, Jawhar said.
The PM, in his address, said the focus in the present situation was clearly on the role of the private sector and its competitiveness and on attracting more foreign and local investment.
A highlight of the meet was the presence of a fairly large number of foreign businessmen and women.
In remarks to this newspaper later, a foreign investor attending the meet, Shelley D Chuchmuch, said that to help the Qatari market expand not only local but all companies needed to be provided equal opportunities.
He said a joint committee needed to be set up with representatives of the government and the private sector to help resolve the woes of the latter.
THE PENINSULA
