A rapidly expanding population and a steady supply of hydrocarbons and infrastructure projects have allowed Qatar’s banking sector to maintain the double digit growth it has achieved over recent years. However, while the project pipeline remains full, the increasingly competitive banking environment has encouraged the nation’s lenders to seek...
It is easy to discern the fresh momentum in the drive to boost the private sector and, more particularly, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Qatar. A number of recent developments indicate the government’s determination to create a more balanced economy for the hydrocarbons-rich state: the appointment in January 2015 of the minister...
Qatar has been a prominent player in the region’s Islamic banking sector since the early 1980s, and Islamic banking accounted for roughly 26% of the country’s total banking assets as of March 2015, with growth in the first nine months of 2014 outstripping that of Qatar’s largest banks. Meanwhile, the country was the region’s third-largest issuer of sukuk in both 2013 and 2014, while 6.2% of...
An increasingly competitive banking environment has encouraged lenders to seek out revenues in previously underserved sectors. Personal lending, for example, has become more important to the sector: in 2010 it accounted for 19.3% of aggregate bank lending, but by 2013 the segment’s share had grown to 23.6% of the credit mix. Meanwhile, lenders have begun to adopt SME-friendly measures such as...
Hydrocarbons revenues, specifically from liquefied natural gas, still form the bulk of Qatar’s national income. However, as the country moves forward with Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV 2030), the government is increasingly seeking to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons while investing in renewable solutions to meet the energy demands of the future.
The Philippine economy is gradually on the rise, largely driven by its business process outsourcing, industry and construction sectors. The average pace of growth in the Philippines in the first half of the decade was 6.3%, compared to 6% in Indonesia, 5.8% in Malaysia and Vietnam, and 3.6% in Thailand.
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