DOHA: Top global bankers, financiers and economic experts will attend the two-day ‘The Euromoney Qatar Conference 2015’, which opens today.
The Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani will deliver the opening address.
The Premier’s address will be followed by keynote speeches and interviews with senior Qatari leaders, including Minister of Finance H E Ali Sherif Al Emadi, Minister of Information and Communications Technology H E Dr Hessa Sultan Al Jaber, Qatar Financial Centre CEO Yousuf Mohamed Al Jaida and Doha Bank CEO Dr R Seetharaman as well as global executives including International Finance Corporation Vice-President Dimitris Tsitsiragos, MI6 Former Chief Sir John Scarlett and SarkisYoghourtdjian, Adviser, Banking Supervision and Regulation, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System.
The Euromoney Qatar Conference is one of the most important platforms for bringing national finance leaders and international banking executives together, and this year’s conference — held during a period of significant financial uncertainty — is being seen as one of the most important organised to date.
Richard Banks (pictured), Consulting Editor at Euromoney Conferences and Managing Director of RMBanks & Co Ltd, who is chairing both days, said: “The Euromoney Qatar Conference has traditionally served as a meeting point for international and regional financial leaders, offering perspectives from across the industry and around the world. This year, as leaders face up to some of the growing financial challenges and a widening divergence between emerging, European and American economies, we’ve seen strong demand for places. In particular, Qatar’s position as a hub of stability in an increasing uncertain region makes it an ideal venue for this conference.”
Qatar’s ‘solid and strong’ macroeconomic policy of diversifying its hydrocarbon-rich economy received positive feedback from the International Monetary Fund in November 2015. The Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) has predicted that the non-hydrocarbon sector will grow faster than hydrocarbons from 2015-2017. Non-hydrocarbons contributed 62 percent of the real gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, and their share of the economy is likely to rise in an era of low oil prices.
Qatar’s stability contrasts significantly with the global picture, with global growth averaging 3.1 percent this year (down from 2014’s 3.4 percent average), and with very different growth rates in the US, Europe and emerging markets.
The IMF has predicted that the US economy will expand 2.6 percent in 2014 and 2.8 percent in 2015, while America’s employers have added nearly three million jobs this year. In contrast, the eurozone’s economy shrank in 2012 and 2013, and grew less than 1 percent last year.
For bankers looking to understand the trends driving this apparent divergence, The Euromoney Qatar Conference is running special sessions looking at some of the key topics. Panels and workshops will be held on ‘Qatar’s Strategy in a Changing World’, ‘Finance and Capital Markets in Qatar’, ‘Technology and Finance’ and ‘The Energy Strategy.’
The Conference will also organise a special workshop on entrepreneurship in Qatar, in partnership with Qatar Development Bank. The session will look at QDB’s model of small company growth and the benefits it provides for Qatar, as well as reviewing the broad range of incubators and programmes being established to support the start-up and small business sector.
The Peninsula is the editorial partner of the high-profile conference.
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