The Middle East

As Qatar’s population and economy have continued to expand in recent years, demand for utilities has also been increasing rapidly. Power and water consumption have recorded average growth rates of 10.4% and 7.7% a year, respectively, over the last half decade, according to the country’s main utilities authority, the Qatar General Electricity...

With global oil and gas prices remaining depressed in mid-2016, impacting government revenues and production, state-owned Qatar Petroleum (QP) is now rolling out an ambitious restructuring programme that aims to reduce its domestic workforce and expand into international energy markets, with a focus on production. Restructuring and...

The year 2015 was a challenging one for Qatar’s oil and gas industry. The state saw its hydrocarbons revenue, which accounts for a significant portion of its income, significantly impacted as an ongoing global oil price plummet accelerated, with crude oil losing over two-thirds of its value between June 2014 and January 2016. Redundancies,...

Fueled in large part by government investment in infrastructure and other large-scale construction projects, over the past decade Qatar has become the fastest-growing insurance market in the GCC region, according to recent reports published by ratings firm Moody’s and Dubai-based investment bank Alpen Capital. In 2014 alone Qatari underwriters...

In recent years Qatar’s insurance sector has expanded swiftly, on the back of government spending, economic development and steadily increasing awareness of the benefits of coverage among the nation’s rapidly growing population.

The maturation of Qatar’s Islamic financial services (IFS) industry over the past decade and a half has led the country’s sharia-compliant institutions to take a two-tiered approach to growing their business. First, the nation’s Islamic financial institutions have focused on serving domestic demand. Second, as in the conventional segment, many...