DOHA: Qatar’s ambitious economic diversification programme has helped the country check unprecedented global oil price crash impact, Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani stated yesterday.
Delivering the opening address at the MEED’s Qatar Projects conference, the Minister said that growth of Qatar’s non-oil economy has been expedited and the country is well positioned to meet its 2030 vision, in which economic diversification is a key component. He pointed that the non-oil sector grew at an accelerated pace over the recent years, to contribute 49 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014.
The Government, committed to its development role, has been successful in introducing new legislative reforms that have been established to increase private investment in the country. .“State legislation such as the New Companies Law has been put in place to create an investment environment to allow investors to participate in all aspects of Qatar’s economy”, he said.
He said the Ministry is currently working on a number of other initiatives as well, to boost private investment, including establishing a public-private-partnership (PPP) frame work. The plans for new free zones is to be implemented by 2019, which would plug the gap in logistics.
“The ministry is currently working on reinforcing the principle of public private partnership to further bolster the economic diversification programme. The ministry’s decision to develop the logistics zones projects was part of this strategy. Covering an area of about 9 million sqm, the project is aimed at meeting the demands of the domestic market in the logistic and storage sector,” the Minister said.
DOHA: Qatar aims to enact a law covering the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) by the end of 2016, part of efforts to boost its fledgling private sector and ease the strain on government finances caused by low oil prices.
Qatar’s ministry of economy and commerce will submit a draft PPP law to the cabinet by August, Saud Al Attiyah, an official at the ministry, said yesterday. “We hope to have the framework completed and start implementing the law by the end of the year,” he said.
In PPPs, private investors take stakes in projects along with the government, bearing part of the risk and sharing profits.
Qatar has used the structure in the utility and oil and gas sectors — in 2015, Qatar General Electricity and Water Corp signed a contract with a Japanese-led consortium to develop a $3bn water and power project — but the new law would make PPPs easier to operate and expand their use into other sectors.
The Peninsula
