Qatar

Sitting down for dinner at this year's Oil Baron's Ball in Dubai next month will likely be a number of executives from one of Qatar's great energy success stories - RasGas.

With only two years to go to the opening of the 15th Asian games in the Qatari capital of Doha, the government is working hard to promote both the event and the country itself as a venue for sporting events.

While Qatar's real estate and construction boom continues at breakneck pace, the perennial problem of shortages in building materials was given another airing this week, as building-sector leaders and the government tried to deal with a dwindling amount of cement, steel and gravel. At the same time though, analysts were generally unanimous in predicting a rosy future for real estate in the country, despite complaints from many residents over rocketing rents and prices.

A new report released this week shows some healthy times ahead for Qatar's construction sector, which seems to have left far behind its former, darker days. The building boom looks set to continue after the Asian Games in 2006, with this Doha-based event already turning large parts of the country into a building site.

With foreign workers long constituting a majority of the population in Qatar, snags in the labour market have often developed an international dimension to them. Nowadays too, the labour market is going through a period of important change. Some overseas suppliers of skilled and non-skilled workers have been tightening up on their expatriate numbers, while foreign workers already in Qatar are becoming more organised. At the same time, some companies are beginning to see overseas workers as not just a source of cheap labour, but as a useful market for their products.

News that Qatar is to have a new body to oversee the development of its IT sector was broadly welcomed by industry insiders this week, adding to other good news for the country's internet and telecoms sectors. With IT expanding at a rapid rate of knots, Qataris are now positioning themselves well to take advantage of regional developments, too.